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*Bs/Hugh  Walpole 

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ANNE   DILLON 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 


net. 
M  it 

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ul  and 

lent. 


Here  ta  a  story  a           **" '   Kel6n  A '  WU°"            e  not 

let  their  hearts  Ic  l:DE, 

the  brilliant  beauty  other 

wMrldly  suggestions  LIKE. 

B  jt  it  has  a  wonderf  n  Mr. 

Walpole.     Here  he  meiiows  i«  .*  .~ _                            ithout 

losing  any  of  his  passionate  youth. 

This  is  the  story  of  a  dozen  children  living  about  an  old 
city-square  that  is  filled  with  leisure  and  the  sound  of  leaves. 
The  son  of  a  duke  is  one  child,  and  another  the  son  of  a  slat- 
ternly housekeeper.  But  their  lives  are  all  hound  together  by 
fellow-citi/enship  in  the  world  of  fancy,  by  the  guidance  of  the 
Friend,  hidden  from  grown-ups  but  visible  to  children. 

Mr.  Walpole  shows  an  amazing  ability  to  enter  into  the 
children's  world,  where  carpets  are  vast  moors,  the  fire  a 
secret  whisperer,  and  the  wind  a  threatening  pirate  from  a 
wrecked  galleon.  He  loves  children,  w  ith  all  his  heart  and  soul 
and  imagination,  and  he  makes  them  magically  live  again  in 
the  little  world  by  the  hearth. 


/e- 


s 


THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 
HUGH        WALPOLE 


NOVELS  BY  HUGH  WALPOLE 


STUDIES  7.V  PLACE 

THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 
THE  WOODEN  HORSE 
MARADICK  AT  FORTY 
THE  GODS  AND  MR.  PERRIN 

TWO  PROLOGUES 

THE  PRELUDE  TO  ADVENTURE 
FORTITUDB 

THE  RISING  CITY 

1.    THE  DUCHESS  OF  WREXE 
i.    THE  GREEN  MIRROR 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


THE  GOLDEN 
SCARECROW 


BY 

HUGH  WALPOLE 

AUTHOR   OF 

"THE  DUCHESS  OF  WREXE,"  "FORTITUDE,"  "THE  PRELUDE  TO 
ADVENTURE."  "THE  WOODEN  HORSE."  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1915. 
Br  GEORGE  H.  DOBAN  COMPACT 


College 
Library 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

PROLOGUE  —  HUGH  SEYMOUR  ......    11 

I.    HENRY  FITZGEORGE  STRETHEB    .....     43 

II.    ERNEST  HENRY  ..........     65 

HI.    ANGELINA     .....     ......    94 

IV.    BIM  ROCHESTER     .........  121 

Y.    NANCY  Ross     ..........  146 

VI.    'ENERY   ........     ....  172 

VII.    BARBARA    FLINT     .........  198 

VHL    SARAH  TREFUSIS     .........  226 

IX.    YOUNG  JOHN  SCARLET     .......  256 

EPILOGUE  .     .          «    .  274 


THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 


THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

PROLOGUE 


HUGH   SEYMOUR 


WHEN  Hugh  Seymour  was  nine  years  of 
age  he  was  sent  from  Ceylon,  where  his 
parents  lived,  to  he  educated  in  England.  His 
relations  having,  for  the  most  part,  settled  in 
foreign  countries,  he  spent  his  holidays  as  a 
very  minute  and  pale-faced  "paying  guest"  in 
various  houses  where  other  children  were  of 
more  importance  than  he,  or  where  children  as 
a  race  were  of  no  importance  at  all.  It  was  in 
this  way  that  he  became  during  certain  months 
of  1889  and  1890  and  '91  a  resident  in  the  family 
of  the  Rev.  William  Lasher,  Vicar  of  Clinton 
St.  Mary,  that  large  ramhling  village  on  the 
edge  of  Roche  St.  Mary  Moor  in  South  Glebe- 
shire. 

11 


12         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

He  spent  there  the  two  Christmases  of  1890 
and  1891  (when  he  was  ten  and  eleven  years  of 
age),  and  it  is  with  the  second  of  these  that  the 
following  incident,  and  indeed  the  whole  of  this 
book,  has  to  do.  Hugh  Seymour  could  not,  at 
the  period  of  which  I  write,  be  called  an  attrac- 
tive child;  he  was  not  even  "interesting"  or 
"unusual."  He  was  very  minutely  made,  with 
bones  so  brittle  that  it  seemed  that,  at  any  mo- 
ment, he  might  crack  and  splinter  into  sharp 
little  pieces ;  and  I  am  afraid  that  no  one  would 
have  minded  very  greatly  had  this  occurred. 
But  although  he  was  so  thin  his  face  had  a 
white  and  overhanging  appearance,  his  cheeks 
being  pale  and  puffy  and  his  under-lip  jutted 
forward  in  front  of  projecting  teeth — he  was 
known  as  the  "White  Rabbit"  by  his  school- 
fellows. He  was  not,  however,  so  ugly  as  this 
appearance  would  apparently  convey,  for  his 
large,  grey  eyes,  soft  and  even,  at  times 
agreeably  humorous,  were  pleasant  and  cheer- 
ful 

During  these  years  when  he  knew  Mr.  Lasher 
he  was  undoubtedly  unfortunate.  He  was  short- 
sighted, but  no  one  had,  as  yet,  discovered  this, 
and  he  was,  therefore,  blamed  for  much  clumsi- 
ness that  he  could  not  prevent  and  for  a  good 


HUGH  SEYMOUR  13 

deal  of  sensitiveness  that  came  quite  simply 
from  his  eagerness  to  do  what  he  was  told  and 
his  inability  to  see  his  way  to  do  it.  He  was 
not,  at  this  time,  easy  with  strangers  and 
seemed  to  them  both  conceited  and  awkward. 
Conceit  was  far  from  him — he  was,  in  fact, 
amazed  at  so  feeble  a  creature  as  himself! — 
but  awkward  he  was,  and  very  often  greedy, 
selfish,  impetuous,  untruthful  and  even  cruel: 
he  was  nearly  always  dirty,  and  attributed  this 
to  the  evil  wishes  of  some  malign  fairy  who 
flung  mud  upon  him,  dropped  him  into  puddles 
and  covered  him  with  ink  simply  for  the  fun 
of  the  thing! 

He  did  not,  at  this  time,  care  very  greatly 
for  reading;  he  told  himself  stories — long  sto- 
ries with  enormous  families  in  them,  trains  of 
elephants,  ropes  and  ropes  of  pearls,  towers 
of  ivory,  peacocks,  and  strange  meals  of  saf- 
fron buns,  roast  chicken,  and  gingerbread. 
His  active,  everyday  concern,  however,  was 
to  become  a  sportsman;  he  wished  to  be  the 
best  cricketer,  the  best  footballer,  the  fastest 
runner  of  his  school,  and  he  had  not — even 
then  faintly  he  knew  it — the  remotest  chance 
of  doing  any  of  these  things  even  moderately 
well.  He  was  bullied  at  school  until  his  ap- 


14         THE  GOLDEN  SCABECROW 

pointment  as  his  dormitory 's  story-teller  gave 
him  a  certain  status,  but  his  efforts  at  cricket 
and  football  were  mocked  with  jeers  and  in- 
sults. He  could  not  throw  a  cricket-ball,  he 
could  not  see  to  catch  one  after  it  was  thrown 
to  him,  did  he  try  to  kick  a  football  he  missed 
it,  and  when  he  had  run  for  five  minutes  he 
saw  purple  skies  and  silver  stars  and  had 
cramp  in  his  legs.  He  had,  however,  during 
these  years  at  Mr.  Lasher's,  this  great  over- 
mastering ambition. 

In  his  sleep,  at  any  rate,  he  was  a  hero;  in 
the  wide-awake  world  he  was,  in  the  opinion 
of  almost  every  one,  a  fool.  He  was  exactly 
the  type  of  boy  whom  the  Rev.  "William  Lasher 
could  least  easily  understand.  Mr.  Lasher  was 
tall  and  thin  (his  knees  often  cracked  with  a 
terrifying  noise),  blue-black  about  the  cheeks, 
hooked  as  to  the  nose,  bald  and  shining  as  to 
the  head,  genial  as  to  the  manner,  and  prac- 
tical to  the  shining  tips  of  his  fingers.  He  had 
not,  at  Cambridge,  obtained  a  rowing  blue,  but 
"had  it  not  been  for  a  most  unfortunate  at- 
tack of  scarlet  fever "  He  was  President 

of  the  Clinton  St.  Mary  Cricket  Club,  1890 
(matches  played,  six;  lost,  five;  drawn,  one), 
knew  how  to  slash  the  ball  across  the  net  at  a 


HUGH  SEYMOTJK  15 

tennis  garden  party,  always  read  the  prayers 
in  church  as  though  he  were  imploring  God  to 
keep  a  straighter  bat  and  improve  His  cut  to 
leg,  and  had  a  passion  for  knocking  nails  into 
walls,  screwing  locks  into  doors,  and  making 
chicken  runs.  He  was,  he  often  thanked  his 
stars,  a  practical  Eealist,  and  his  wife,  who  was 
fat,  stupid,  and  in  a  state  of  perpetual  won- 
der, used  to.  say  of  him,  "If  Will  hadn't  been 
a  clergyman  he  would  have  made  such  an  en- 
gineer. If  God  had  blessed  us  with  a  boy,  I'm 
sure  he  would  have  been  something  scientific. 
[Will's  no  dreamer."  Mr.  Lasher  was  kindly 
of  heart  so  long  as  you  allowed  him  to  maintain 
that  the  world  was  made  for  one  type  of  hu- 
manity only.  He  was  as  breezy  as  a  west 
wind,  loved  to  bathe  in  the  garden  pond  on 
Christmas  Day  ("had  to  break  the  ice  that 
morning"),  and  at  penny  readings  at  the  vil- 
lage schoolroom  would  read  extracts  from 
"Pickwick,"  and  would  laugh  so  heartily  him- 
self that  he  would  have  to  stop  and  wipe  his 
eyes.  "If  you  must  read  novels,"  he  would 
say,  "read  Dickens.  Nothing  to  offend  the 
youngest  among  us — fine  breezy  stuff  with  an 
optimism  that  does  you  good  and  people  you 
get  to  know  and  be  fond  of.  By  Jove,  I  can 


16         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

still  cry  over  Little  Nell  and  am  not  ashamed 
of  it" 

He  had  the  heartiest  contempt  for  "wast- 
ers'* and  "failures,"  and  he  was  afraid  there 
were  a  great  many  in  the  world.  "Give  me  a 
man  who  is  a  man,"  he  would  say,  "a  man 
who  can  hit  a  ball  for  six,  run  ten  miles  before 
breakfast  and  take  his  knocks  with  the  best  of 
them.  Wasn't  it  Browning  who  said, 

"  'God's  in  His  heaven, 

All's  right  with  the  world.' 

Browning  was  a  great  teacher — after  Tenny- 
son, one  of  our  greatest.  Where  are  such  men 
to-day?" 

He  was,  therefore,  in  spite  of  his  love  for 
outdoor  pursuits,  a  cultured  man. 

It  was  natural,  perhaps,  that  he  should  find 
Hugh  Seymour  "a  pity."  Nearly  everything 
that  he  said  about  Hugh  Seymour  began  with 
the  words— 

"It's  a  pity  that " 

"It's  a  pity  that  you  can't  get  some  red  into 
your  cheeks,  my  boy." 

"It's  a  pity  you  don't  care  about  porridge. 
You  must  learn  to  like  it." 


HUGH  SEYMOUR  17 

"It's  a  pity  you  can't  even  make  a  little 
progress  with  your  mathematics." 

"It's  a  pity  you  told  me  a  lie  because " 

"It's  a  pity  you  were  rude  to  Mrs.  Lasher. 
No  gentleman " 

"It's  a  pity  you  weren't  attending 
when " 

Mr.  Lasher  was,  very  earnestly,  determined 
to  do  his  best  for  the  boy,  and,  as  he  said, 
"You  see,  Hugh,  if  we  do  our  best  for  you,  you 
must  do  your  best  for  us.  Now  I  can't,  I'm 
afraid,  call  this  your  best." 

Hugh  would  have  liked  to  say  that  it  was  the 
best  that  he  could  do  in  that  particular  direc- 
tion (very  probably  Euclid),  but  if  only  he 
might  be  allowed  to  try  his  hand  in  quite  an- 
other direction,  he  might  do  something  very 
fine  indeed.  He  never,  of  course,  had  a  chance 
of  saying  this,  nor  would  such  a  declaration 
have  greatly  benefited  him,  because,  for  Mr. 
Lasher,  there  was  only  one  way  for  every  one 
and  the  sooner  (if  you  were  a  small  boy)  you 
followed  it  the  better. 

"Don't  dream,  Hugh,"  said  Mr.  Lasher, 
"remember  that  no  man  ever  did  good  work 
by  dreaming.  The  goal  is  to  the  strong.  Ee- 
member  that." 


18         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

Hugh  did  remember  it  and  would  have  liked 
very  much  to  be  as  strong  as  possible,  but 
whenever  he  tried  feats  of  strength  he  failed 
and  looked  foolish. 

"My  dear  boy,  that's  not  the  way  to  do  it," 
said  Mr.  Lasher;  "it's  a  pity  that  you  don't 
listen  to  what  I  tell  you." 


n 

A  VEBY  remarkable  fact  about  Mr.  Lasher  was 
this — that  he  paid  no  attention  whatever  to  the 
county  in  which  he  lived.  Now  there  are  cer- 
tain counties  in  England  where  it  is  possible  to 
say,  "I  am  in  England,"  and  to  leave  it  at 
that;  their  quality  is  simply  English  with  no 
more  individual  personality.  But  Glebeshire 
has  such  an  individuality,  whether  for  good 
or  evil,  that  it  forces  comment  from  the  most 
sluggish  and  inattentive  of  human  beings.  Mr. 
Lasher  was  perhaps  the  only  soul,  living  or 
dead,  who  succeeded  in  living  in  it  during  forty 
years  (he  is  still  there,  he  is  a  Canon  now  in 
Polchester)  and  never  saying  anything  about 
it.  "When  on  his  visits  to  London  people  in- 
quired his  opinion  of  Glebeshire,  he  would  say : 
"Ah  well!  .  .I'm  afraid  Methodism  and  in- 


HUGH  SEYMOUR  19 

temperance  are  very  strong  ...  all  the  same, 
we're  fighting  'em,  fighting  'em!" 

This  was  the  more  remarkable  in  that  Mr. 
Lasher  lived  upon  the  very  edge  of  Eoche  St. 
Mary  Moor,  a  stretch  of  moor  and  sand. 
Boche  St.  Mary  Moor,  that  runs  to  the  sea, 
contains  the  ruins  of  St.  Arthe  Church  (buried 
until  lately  in  the  sand,  but  recently  excavated 
through  the  kind  generosity  of  Sir  John  Porth- 
cullis,  of  Borhaze,  and  shown  to  visitors,  6d.  a 
head,  Wednesday  and  Saturday  afternoons 
free),  and  in  one  of  the  most  romantic,  mist- 
laden,  moon-silvered,  tempest-driven  spots  in 
the  whole  of  Great  Britain. 

The  road  that  ran  from  Clinton  St.  Mary  to 
Borhaze  across  the  moor  was  certainly  a  wild, 
rambling,  beautiful  affair,  and  when  the  sea- 
mists  swept  across  it  and  the  wind  carried  the 
cry  of  the  Bell  of  Trezent  Rock  in  and  out 
above  and  below,  you  had  a  strange  and  moving 
experience.  Mr.  Lasher  was  certainly  com- 
pelled to  ride  on  his  bicycle  from  Clinton 
St.  Mary  to  Borhaze  and  back  again,  and 
never  thought  it  either  strange  or  moving. 
"Only  ten  at  the  Bible  meeting  to-night. 
Borhaze  wants  waking  up.  We'll  see  what 
open-air  services  can  do."  What  the  moor 


20         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

thought  about  Mr.  Lasher  it  is  impossible  to 
know! 

Hugh  Seymour  thought  about  the  moor  con- 
tinually, but  he  was  afraid  to  mention  his  ideas 
of  it  in  public.  There  was  a  legend  in  the  vil- 
lage that  several  hundred  years  ago  some  pi- 
rates, driven  by  storm  into  Borhaze,  found 
their  way  on  to  the  moor  and,  caught  by  the 
mist,  perished  there;  they  are  to  be  seen,  says 
the  village,  in  powdered  wigs,  red  coats,  gold 
lace,  and  swords,  haunting  the  sand-dunes. 
God  help  the  poor  soul  who  may  fall  into  their 
hands!  This  was  a  very  pleasant  story,  and 
Hugh  Seymour's  thoughts  often  crept  around 
and  about  it.  He  would  like  to  find  a  pirate,  to 
bring  him  to  the  vicarage,  and  present  him  to 
Mr.  Lasher.  He  knew  that  Mrs.  Lasher  would 
say,  "Fancy,  a  pirate.  Well!  now,  fancy! 
Well,  here's  a  pirate!"  And  that  Mr.  Lasher 
would  say,  "It's  a  pity,  Hugh,  that  you  don't 
choose  your  company  more  carefully.  Look  at 
the  man's  nose!" 

Hugh,  although  he  was  only  eleven,  knew 
this.  Hugh  did  on  one  occasion  mention  the 
pirates.  "Dreaming  again,  Hugh!  Pity  they 
fill  your  head  with  such  nonsense!  If  they 
read  their  Bibles  more!" 


i  HUGH  SEYMOUR  21 

Nevertheless,  Hugh  continued  his  dreaming. 
He  dreamt  of  the  moor,  of  the  pirates,  of  the 
cobbled  street  in  Borhaze,  of  the  cry  of  the 
Trezent  Bell,  of  the  deep  lanes  and  the  smell 
of  the  flowers  in  them,  of  making  five  hundred 
not  out  at  cricket,  of  doing  a  problem  in  Euclid 
to  Mr.  Lasher's  satisfaction,  of  having  a  collar 
at  the  end  of  the  week  as  clean  as  it  had  been 
at  the  beginning,  of  discovering  the  way  to 
make  a  straight  parting  in  the  hair,  of  not 
wriggling  in  bed  when  Mrs.  Lasher  kissed  him 
at  night,  of  many,  many  other  things. 

He  was  at  this  time  a  very  lonely  boy.  Until 
Mr.  Pidgen  paid  his  visit  he  was  most  remark- 
ably lonely.  After  that  visit  he  was  never 
lonely  again. 

m 

MB.  PIDGEN  came  on  a  visit  to  the  vicarage 
three  days  before  Christmas.  Hugh  Seymour 
saw  him  first  from  the  garden.  Mr.  Pidgen 
was  standing  at  the  window  of  Mr.  Lasher's 
study;  he  was  staring  in  front  of  him  at  the 
sheets  of  light  that  flashed  and  darkened  and 
flashed  again  across  the  lawn,  at  the  green 
cluster  of  holly-berries  by  the  drive-gate,  at 


22         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

the  few  flakes  of  snow  that  fell,  lazily,  care- 
lessly, as  though  they  were  trying  to  decide 
whether  they  would  make  a  grand  affair  of  it 
or  not,  and  perhaps  at  the  small,  grubby  boy 
who  was  looking  at  him  with  one  eye  and  try- 
ing to  learn  the  Collect  for  the  day  (it  was 
Sunday)  with  the  other.  Hugh  had  never  be- 
fore seen  any  one  in  the  least  like  Mr.  Pidgen. 
He  was  short  and  round,  and  his  head  was 
covered  with  tight  little  curls.  His  cheeks  were 
chubby  and  red  and  his  nose  small,  his  mouth 
also  very  small.  He  had  no  chin.  He  was 
wearing  a  bright  blue  velvet  waistcoat  with 
brass  buttons,  and  over  his  black  shoes  there 
shone  white  spats. 

Hugh  had  never  seen  white  spats  before. 
Mr.  Pidgen  shone  with  cleanliness,  and  he  had 
supremely  the  air  of  having  been  exactly  as 
he  was,  all  in  one  piece,  years  ago.  He  was 
like  one  of  the  china  ornaments  in  Mrs.  Lash- 
er's drawing-room  that  the  housemaid  is  told 
to  be  so  careful  about,  and  concerning  whose 
destruction  Hugh  heard  her  on  at  least  one  oc- 
casion declaring,  in  a  voice  half  tears,  half 
defiance,  "Please,  ma'am,  it  wasn't  me.  It  just 
slipped  of  itself!"  Mr.  Pidgen  would  break 
very  completely  were  he  dropped. 


HUGH  SEYMOUB  23 

The  first  thing  about  him  that  struck  Hugh 
was  his  amazing  difference  from  Mr.  Lasher. 
It  seemed  strange  that  any  two  people  so  dif- 
ferent could  be  in  the  same  house.  Mr.  Lasher 
never  gleamed  or  shone,  he  would  not  break 
with  however  violent  an  action  you  dropped 
him,  he  would  certainly  never  wear  white 
spats. 

Hugh  liked  Mr.  Pidgen  at  once.  They 
spoke  for  the  first  time  at  the  mid-day  meal, 
when  Mr.  Lasher  said,  ''More  Yorkshire  pud- 
ding, Pidgen?"  and  Mr.  Pidgen  said,  "I  adore 
it." 

Now  Yorkshire  pudding  happened  to  be  one 
of  Hugh's  special  passions  just  then,  particu- 
larly when  it  was  very  brown  and  crinkly,  so  he 
said  quite  spontaneously  and  without  taking 
thought,  as  he  was  always  told  to  do, 

"So  do  I!" 

"My  dear  Hugh!"  said  Mrs.  Lasher;  "how 
very  greedy!  Fancy!  After  all  you've  been 
told!  Well,  well!  Manners,  manners!" 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Mr.  Pidgen  (his 
mouth  was  full),  "I  said  it  first,  and  I'm  older 
than  he  is.  I  should  know  better.  ...  I  like 
boys  to  be  greedy,  it's  a  good  sign — a  good 
sign.  Besides,  Sunday — after  a  sermon — one 


24         THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECEOW 

naturally  feels  a  bit  peckish.  Good  enough 
sermon,  Lasher,  but  a  bit  long." 

Mr.  Lasher  of  course  did  not  like  this,  and, 
indeed,  it  was  evident  to  any  one  (even  to  a 
small  boy)  that  the  two  gentlemen  would  have 
different  opinions  upon  every  possible  subject. 
However,  Hugh  loved  Mr.  Pidgen  there  and 
then,  and  decided  that  he  would  put  him  into 
the  story  then  running  (appearing  in  nightly 
numbers  from  the  moment  of  his  departure  to 
bed  to  the  instant  of  slumber — say  ten  min- 
utes) ;  he  would  also,  in  the  imaginary  cricket 
matches  that  he  worked  out  on  paper,  give  Mr. 
Pidgen  an  innings  of  two  hundred  not  out  and 
make  him  captain  of  Kent.  He  now  observed 
the  vision  very  carefully  and  discovered  sev- 
eral strange  items  in  his  general  behaviour. 
Mr.  Pidgen  was  fond  of  whistling  and  humming 
to  himself;  he  was  restless  and  would  walk  up 
and  down  a  room  with  his  head  in  the  air  and 
his  hands  behind  his  broad  back,  humming  (out 
of  tone)  " Sally  in  our  Alley,"  or  " Drink  to 
me  only."  Of  course  this  amazed  Mr.  Lasher. 

He  would  quite  suddenly  stop,  stand  like  a 
top  spinning,  balanced  on  his  toes,  and  cry, 
"Ah!  Now  I've  got  it!  No,  I  haven't!  Yes,  I 
have.  By  God,  it's  gone  again!" 


HUGH  SEYMOUR  25 

To  this  also  Mr.  Lasher  strongly  objected, 
and  Hugh  heard  him  say,  "Really,  Pidgen, 
think  of  the  boy!  Think  of  the  boy!"  and  Mr. 
Pidgen  exclaimed,  "By  God,  so  I  should!  .  .  . 
Beg  pardon,  Lasher!  Won't  do  it  again! 
Lord  save  me,  I'm  a  careless  old  drunkard!'* 
He  had  any  number  of  strange  phrases  that 
were  new  and  brilliant  and  exciting  to  the  boy, 
who  listened  to  him.  He  would  say,  "by  the 
martyrs  of  Ephesus!"  or  "Sunshine  and 
thunder!"  or  "God  stir  your  slumbers!"  when 
he  thought  any  one  very  stupid.  He  said  this 
last  one  day  to  Mrs.  Lasher,  and  of  course  she 
was  very  much  astonished.  She  did  not  from 
the  first  like  him  at  all.  Mr.  Pidgen  and  Mr. 
Lasher  had  been  friends  at  Cambridge  and 
had  not  met  one  another  since,  and  every  one 
knows  that  that  is  a  dangerous  basis  for  the 
renewal  of  friendship.  They  had  a  little  dis- 
pute on  the  very  afternoon  of  Mr.  Pidgen 's 
arrival,  when  Mr.  Lasher  asked  his  guest 
whether  he  played  golf. 

1 1  God  preserve  my  soul !  No ! "  said  Mr.  Pid- 
gen. Mr.  Lasher  then  explained  that  playing 
golf  made  one  thin,  hungry  and  self-restrained. 
Mr.  Pidgen  said  that  he  did  not  wish  to  be  the 
first  or  last  of  these,  and  that  he  was  always 


26         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

the  second,  and  that  golf  was  turning  the  fair 
places  of  England  into  troughs  for  the  moneyed 
pigs  of  the  Stock  Exchange  to  swill  in. 

"My  dear  Pidgen!"  cried  Mr.  Lasher,  "I'm 
afraid  no  one  could  call  me  a  moneyed  pig  with 
any  justice — mo  re's  the  pity — and  a  game  of 
golf  to  me  is " 

"Ah!  you're  a  parson,  Lasher,"  said  his 
guest. 

In  fact,  by  the  evening  of  the  second  day  of 
the  visit  it  was  obvious  that  Clinton  St.  Mary 
Vicarage  might,  very  possibly,  witness  a  dis- 
turbed Christmas.  It  was  all  very  tiresome  for 
poor  Mrs.  Lasher.  On  the  late  afternoon  of 
Christmas  Eve,  Hugh  heard  the  stormy  con- 
versation that  follows — a  conversation  that  al- 
tered the  colour  and  texture  of  his  after-life  as 
such  things  may,  when  one  is  still  a  child. 

IV 

CHBISTMAS  EVE  was  always,  to  Hugh,  a  day 
with  glamour.  He  did  not  any  longer  hang  up 
his  stocking  (although  he  would  greatly  have 
liked  to  do  so),  but,  all  day,  his  heart  beat 
thickly  at  the  thought  of  the  morrow,  at  the 
thought  of  something  more  than  the  giving  and 


HUGH  SEYMOUE  27 

receiving  of  presents,  something  more  than  the 
eating  of  food,  something  more  than  singing 
hymns  that  were  delightfully  familiar,  some- 
thing more  than  putting  holly  over  the  pictures 
and  hanging  mistletoe  on  to  the  lamp  in  the 
hall.  Something  there  was  in  the  day  like  go- 
ing home,  like  meeting  people  again  whom  one 
had  loved  once,  and  not  seen  for  many  years, 
something  as  warm  and  romantic  and  lightly 
coloured  and  as  comforting  as  the  most  in- 
spired and  impossible  story  that  one  could  ever, 
lying  in  bed  and  waiting  for  sleep,  invent. 

To-day  there  was  no  snow  but  a  frost,  and 
there  was  a  long  bar  of  saffron  below  the  cold 
sky  and  a  round  red  ball  of  a  sun.  Hugh  was 
sitting  in  a  corner  of  Mr.  Lasher's  study,  look- 
ing at  Dore's  "Don  Quixote,"  when  the  two 
gentlemen  came  in.  He  was  sitting  in  a  dark 
corner  and  they,  because  they  were  angry  with 
one  another,  did  not  recognise  any  one  except 
themselves.  Mr.  Lasher  pulled  furiously  at 
his  pipe  and  Mr.  Pidgen  stood  up  by  the  fire 
with  his  short  fat  legs  spread  wide  and  his 
mouth  smiling,  but  his  eyes  vexed  and  rather 
indignant. 

"My  dear  Pidgen,"  said  Mr.  Lasher,  "you 
misunderstand  me,  you  do  indeed!  It  may  be 


28         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

(I  would  be  the  first  to  admit  that,  like  most 
men,  I  have  my  weakness)  that  I  lay  too  much 
stress  upon  the  healthy,  physical,  normal  life, 
upon  seeing  things  as  they  are  and  not  as  one 
would  like  to  see  them  to  be.  I  don't  believe 
that  Breaming  ever  did  any  good  to  any  man!" 

"It's  only  produced  some  of  the  finest  liter- 
ature the  world  has  ever  known,"  said  Mr. 
Pidgen. 

"Ah!  Genius!  If  you  or  I  were  geniuses, 
Pidgen,  that  would  be  another  affair.  But 
we're  not;  we're  plain,  common-place  hum- 
drum human  beings  with  souls  to  be  saved  and 
work  to  do — work  to  do!" 

There  was  a  little  pause  after  that,  and 
Hugh,  looking  at  Mr.  Pidgen,  saw  the  hurt 
look  in  his  eyes  deepen. 

"Come  now,  Lasher,"  he  said  at  last.  "Let's 
be  honest  one  with  another;  that's  your  line, 
and  you  say  it  ought  to  be  mine.  Come  now, 
as  man  to  man,  you  think  me  a  damnable  fail- 
ure now — beg  pardon — complete  failure — don't 
you?  Don't  be  afraid  of  hurting  me.  I  want  to 
know!" 

Mr.  Lasher  was  really  a  kindly  man,  and 
when  his  eyes  beheld  things — there  were  of 
course  many  things  that  they  never  beheld — 


HUGH  SEYMOUR  29 

lie  would  do  his  best  to  help  anybody.  He 
wanted  to  help  Mr.  Pidgen  now;  but  he  was 
also  a  truthful  man. 

"My  dear  Pidgen!  Ha,  ha!  What  a  ques- 
tion! I'm  sure  many,  many  people  enjoy  your 
books  immensely.  I'm  sure  they  do,  oh,  yes!" 

"Come,  now,  Lasher,  the  truth.  You  won't 
hurt  my  feelings.  If  you  were  discussing  me 
with  a  third  person  you'd  say,  wouldn't  you? 
'Ah,  poor  Pidgen  might  have  done  something 
if  he  hadn't  let  his  fancy  run  away  with  him. 
I  was  with  him  at  Cambridge.  He  promised 
well,  but  I'm  afraid  one  must  admit  that  he's 
failed— he  would  never  stick  to  anything.'  " 

Now  this  was  so  exactly  what  Mr.  Lasher 
had,  on  several  occasions,  said  about  his  friend 
that  he  was  really  for  the  moment  at  a  loss. 
He  pulled  at  his  pipe,  looked  very  grave,  and 
then  said: 

"My  dear  Pidgen,  you  must  remember  our 
lives  have  followed  such  different  courses.  I 
can  only  give  you  my  point  of  view.  I  don't 
myself  care  greatly  for  romances — fairy  tales 
and  so  on.  It  seems  to  me  that  for  a  grown-up 
man.  .  .  .  However,  I  don't  pretend  to  be  a 
literary  fellow ;  I  have  other  work,  other  duties, 
picturesque,  but  nevertheless  necessary." 


30         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 


4    . 


'Ah!"  exclaimed  Mr.  Pidgen,  who,  consid- 
ering that  he  had  invited  his  host's  honest  opin- 
ion, should  not  have  become  irritated  because 
he  had  obtained  it;  "that's  just  it.  You  people 
all  think  only  you  know  what  is  necessary. 

shouldn't  a  fairy  story  be  as  necessary  as  \ 
a  sermon?    A  lot  more  necessary,  I  dare  say.  / 

ou  think  you're  the  only  people  who  can  know 
anything  about  it.  You  people  never  use  your 
imaginations." 

"Nevertheless,"  said  Mr.  Lasher,  very  bit- 
terly (for  he  had  always  said,  "If  one  does  not 
bring  one's  imagination  into  one's  work  one's 
work  is  of  no  value"),  "writers  of  idle  tales 
are  not  the  onTy  people  who  use  their  imagina- 
tions. And,  if  you  will  allow  me,  without  of- 
fence, to  say  so,  Pidgen,  your  books,  even 
amongst  other  things  of  the  same  sort,  have 
not  been  the  most  successful." 

This  remark  seemed  to  pour  water  upon  all 
the  anger  in  Mr.  Pidgen 's  heart.  His  eyes  ex- 
pressed scorn,  but  not  now  for  Mr.  Lasher — 
for  himself.  His  whole  figure  drooped  and  was 
bowed  like  a  robin  in  a  thunderstorm. 

1 ' That's  true  enough.  Bless  my  soul,  Lasher, 
that's  true  enough.  They  hardly  sell  at  all. 
I've  written  a  dozen  of  them  now,  'The  Blue 


HUGH  SEYMOUR  31 

Pouncet  Box,'  'The  Three-tailed  Griffin,'  'The 
Tree  without  any  Branches,'  but  you  won't 
want  to  be  bothered  with  the  names  of  them. 
'The  Griffin'  went  into  two  editions,  but  it  was 
only  because  the  pictures  were  rather  senti- 
mental. I've  often  said  to  myself,  'If  a  thing 
doesn't  sell  in  these  days  it  must  be  good,'  but 
I've  not  really  convinced  myself.  I'd  like  them 
to  have  sold.  Always,  until  now,  I've  had  hopes 
of  the  next  one,  and  thought  that  it  would  turn 
out  better,  like  a  woman  with  her  babies.  I 
seem  to  have  given  up  expecting  that  now.  It 
isn't,  you  know,  being  always  hard-up  that  I 
mind  so  much,  although  that,  mind  you,  isn't 
pleasant,  no,  by  Jehoshaphat,  it  isn't.  But 
we  would  like  now  and  again  to  find  that  other 
people  have  enjoyed  what  one  hoped  they 
would  enjoy.  But  I  don't  know,  they  always 
seem  too  old  for  children  and  too  young  for 
grown-ups — my  stories,  I  mean." 

It  was  one  of  the  hardest  traits  in  Mr.  Lash- 
er's character,  as  Hugh  well  realised,  "to  rub 
it  in"  over  a  fallen  foe.  He  considered  this  his 
duty ;  it  was  also,  I  am  afraid,  a  pleasure.  "It 's 
a  pity,"  he  said,  "that  things  should  not  have 
gone  better;  but  there  are  so  many  writers 
to-day  that  I  wonder  any  one  writes  at  all.  We 


32         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

live  in  a  practical,  realistic  age.  The  leaders 
amongst  us  have  decided  that  every  man  must 
gird  his  loins  and  go  out  to  fight  his  battles 
with  real  weapons  in  a  real  cause,  not  sit 
dreaming  at  his  windows  looking  down  upon 
the  busy  market-place."  (Mr.  Lasher  loved 
what  he  called  "images."  There  were  many 
in  his  sermons.)  "But,  my  dear  Pidgen,  it  is 
in  no  way  too  late.  Give  up  your  fairy  stories 
now  that  they  have  been  proved  a  failure." 

Here  Mr.  Pidgen,  in  the  most  astonishing 
way,  was  suddenly  in  a  terrible  temper. 
' '  They  're  not ! "  he  almost  screamed.  ' '  Not  at 
all.  Failures,  from  the  worldly  point  of  view, 
yes;  but  there  are  some  who  understand.  I 
would  not  have  done  anything  else  if  I  could. 
You,  Lasher,  with  your  soup-tickets  and  your 
choir-treats,  think  there's  no  room  for  me  and 
my  fairy  stories.  I  tell  you,  you  may  find  your- 
self jolly  well  mistaken  one  of  these  days. 
Yes,  by  Caesar,  you  may.  How  do  you  know 
what's  best  worth  doing!  If  you'd  listened  a 
little  more  to  the  things  you  were  told  when 
you  were  a  baby,  you'd  be  a  more  intelligent 
man  now." 

"When  I  was  a  baby,"  said  Mr.  Lasher,  in- 
credulously, as  though  that  were  a  thing  that 


HUGH  SEYMOUR  33 

he  never  possibly  could  have  been,  "my  dear 
Pidgen!" 

"Ah,  you  think  it  absurd,"  said  the  other, 
a  little  cooler  again.  "But  how  do  you  know 
who  watched  over  your  early  years  and  wanted 
you  to  be  a  dreamy,  fairy  tale  kind  of  person 
instead  of  the  cayenne  pepper  sort  of  man  you 
are.  There 's  always  some  one  there,  I  tell  you, 
and  you  can  have  your  choice,  whether  you'll 
believe  more  than  you  see  all  your  life  or  less 
than  you  see.  Every  baby  knows  about  it ;  then, 
as  they  grow  older,  it  fades  and,  with  many 
people,  goes  altogether.  He's  never  left  me, 
St.  Christopher,  you  know,  and  that's  one 
thing.  Of  course,  the  ideal  thing  is  somewhere 
between  the  two ;  recognise  St.  Christopher  and 
see  the  real  world  as  well.  I'm  afraid  neither 
you  nor  I  is  the  ideal  man,  Lasher.  Why,  I 
tell  you,  any  baby  of  three  knows  more  than 
you  do!  You're  proud  of  never  seeing  beyond 
your  nose.  I'm  proud  of  never  seeing  my  nose 
at  all;  we're  both  wrong.  But  I  am  ready  to 
admit  your  uses.  You  never  will  admit  mine; 
and  it  isn't  any  use  your  denying  my  Friend. 
He  stayed  with  you  a  bit  when  you  just  ar- 
rived, but  I  expect  he  soon  left  you.  You're 
jolly  glad  he  did." 


34         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

"My  dear  Pidgen,"  said  Mr.  Lasher,  "I 
haven't  understood  a  word." 

Pidgen  shook  his  head.  "You're  right. 
That's  just  what's  the  matter  with  me.  I  can't 
even  put  what  I  see  plainly."  He  sighed 
deeply.  "I've  failed.  There's  no  doubt  about 
it.  But,  although  I  know  that,  I  Ve  had  a  happy 
life.  That 's  the  funny  part  of  it.  I've  enjoyed 
it  more  than  you  ever  will,  Lasher.  At  least, 
I'm  never  lonely.  I  like  my  food,  too,  and  one's 
head's  always  full  of  jolly  ideas,  if  only  they 
seemed  jolly  to  other  people." 

"Upon  my  word,  Pidgen,"  said  Mr.  Lasher. 
At  this  moment  Mrs.  Lasher  opened  the 
door. 

"Well,  well.  Fancy  1  Sitting  over  the  fire 
talking!  Oh,  you  men!  Tea!  tea!  Tea,  Will! 
Fancy  talking  all  the  afternoon!  Well!" 

No  one  had  noticed  Hugh.  He,  however,  had 
understood  Mr.  Pidgen  better  than  Mr.  Lasher 
did. 


THIS  conversation  aroused  in  Hugh,  for  va- 
rious reasons,  the  greatest  possible  excitement. 
He  would  have  liked  to  have  asked  Mr.  Pidgen 


HUGH  SEYMOUR  35 

many  questions.  Christmas  Day  came,  and  a 
beautiful  day  enthroned  it:  a  pale  blue  sky, 
faint  and  clear,  was  a  background  to  misty  lit- 
tle clouds  that  hovered,  then  fled  and  disap- 
peared, and  from  these  flakes  of  snow  fell  now 
and  then  across  the  shining  sunlight.  Early  in 
the  winter  afternoon  a  moon  like  an  orange 
feather  sailed  into  the  sky  as  the  lower  stretch- 
es of  blue  changed  into  saffron  and  gold.  Trees 
and  hills  and  woods  were  crystal-clear,  and 
shone  with  an  intensity  of  outline  as  though 
their  shapes  had  been  cut  by  some  giant  knife 
against  the  background.  Although  there  was 
no  wind  the  air  was  so  expectant  that  the  ring- 
ing of  church  bells  and  the  echo  of  voices  came 
as  though  across  still  water.  The  colour  of  the 
sunlight  was  caught  in  the  cups  and  runnels 
of  the  stiff  frozen  roads  and  a  horse's  hoofs 
echoed,  sharp  and  ringing,  over  fields  and 
hedges.  The  ponds  were  silvered  into  a  sheet 
of  ice,  so  thin  that  the  water  showed  dark  be- 
neath it.  All  the  trees  were  rimmed  with  hoar- 
frost. 

On  Christmas  afternoon,  when  three  o'clock 
had  just  struck  from  the  church  tower,  Hugh 
and  Mr.  Pidgen  met,  as  though  by  some  con- 
spirator's agreement,  by  the  garden  gate. 


36         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

They  had  said  nothing  to  one  another  and  yet 
there  they  were;  they  both  glanced  anxiously 
back  at  the  house  and  then  Mr.  Pidgen  said: 

"Suppose  we  take  a  walk." 

"Thank  you  very  much,"  said  Hugh.  "Tea 
isn't  till  half -past  four." 

"Very  well,  then,  suppose  you  lead  the 
way."  They  walked  a  little,  and  then  Hugh 
said:  "I  was  there  yesterday,  in  the  study, 
when  you  talked  all  that  about  your  books,  and 
everything."  The  words  came  from  him  in 
little  breathless  gusts  because  he  was  excited. 

Mr.  Pidgen  stopped  and  looked  upon  him. 
"Thunder  and  sunshine  1  You  don't  say  so! 
What  under  heaven  were  you  doing?" 

"I  was  reading,  and  you  came  in  and  then 
I  was  interested." 

"Well?" 

Hugh  dropped  his  voice. 

"I  understood  all  that  you  meant.  I'd  like 
to  read  your  books  if  I  may.  We  haven't  any 
in  the  house." 

"Bless  my  soul!  Here's  some  one  wants  to 
read  my  books ! ' '  Mr.  Pidgen  was  undoubted- 
ly pleased.  "I'll  send  you  some.  I'll  send  you 
them  all!" 

Hugh  gasped  with  pleasure.   "I'll  read  them 


HUGH  SEYMOUB  37 

all,  however  many  there  are!"  lie  said  excit- 
edly. "Every  word." 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Pidgen,  "that's  more  than 
any  one  else  has  ever  done." 

"I'd  rather  be  with  you,"  said  the  boy  very 
confidently,  "than  Mr.  Lasher.  I'd  rather 
write  stories  than  preach  sermons  that  no  one 
wants  to  listen  to."  Then  more  timidly  he 
continued :  "I  know  what  you  meant  about  the 
man  who  comes  when  you're  a  baby.  I  remem- 
ber him  quite  well,  but  I  never  can  say  any- 
thing because  they'd  say  I  was  silly.  Some- 
times I  think  he's  still  hanging  round  only  he 
doesn't  come  to  the  vicarage  much.  He  doesn't 
like  Mr.  Lasher  much,  I  expect.  But  I  do  re- 
member him.  He  had  a  beard  and  I  used  to 
think  it  funny  the  nurse  didn't  see  him.  That 
was  before  we  went  to  Ceylon,  you  know,  we 
used  to  live  in  Polchester  then.  When  it  was 
nearly  dark  and  not  quite  he'd  be  there.  I  for- 
got about  him  in  Ceylon,  but  since  I've  been 
here  I've  wondered  ...  it's  sometimes  like 
some  one  whispering  to  you  and  you  know  if 
you  turn  round  he  won't  be  there,  but  he  is 
there  all  the  same.  I  made  twenty-five 
last  summer  against  Porthington  Grammar; 
they're  not  much  good  really,  and  it  was  our 


38         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

second  eleven,  and  I  was  nearly  out  second 
ball;  anyway  I  made  twenty-five,  and  after- 
wards as  I  was  ragging  about  I  suddenly 
thought  of  him.  I  know  he  was  pleased.  If  it 
had  been  a  little  darker  I  believe  I'd  have  seen 
him.  And  then  last  night,  after  I  was  in  bed 
and  was  thinking  about  what  you'd  said  I  know 
he  was  near  the  window,  only  I  didn't  look  lest 
he  should  go  away.  But  of  course  Mr.  Lasher 
would  say  that's  all  rot,  like  the  pirates,  only 
I  know  it  isn't."  Hugh  broke  off  for  lack  of 
breath,  nothing  else  would  have  stopped  him. 
When  he  was  encouraged  he  was  a  terrible 
talker.  He  suddenly  added  in  a  sharp  little 
voice  like  the  report  from  a  pistol:  "So  one 
can't  be  lonely  or  anything,  can  one,  if  there's 
always  some  one  about?" 

Mr.  Pidgen  was  greatly  touched.  He  put  his 
hand  upon  Hugh's  shoulder.  "My  dear  boy," 
he  said,  "my  dear  boy — dear  me,  dear  me.  I'm 
afraid  you're  going  to  have  a  dreadful  time 
when  you  grow  up.  I  really  mustn  't  encourage 
you.  And  yet,  who  can  help  himself?" 

"But  you  said  yourself  that  you'd  seen  him, 
that  you  knew  him  quite  well  ? ' ' 

"And  so  I  do — and  so  I  do.  But  you'll  find, 
as  you  grow  older,  there  are  many  people  who 


HUGH  SEYMOUR  39 

won't  believe  you.  And  there's  this,  too.  The 
more  you  live  in  your  head,  dreaming  and  see- 
ing things  that  aren't  there,  the  less  you'll  see 
the  things  that  are  there.  You'll  always  be 
tumbling  over  things.  You'll  never  get  on. 
You'll  never  be  a  success." 

"Never  mind,"  said  Hugh,  "it  doesn't  mat- 
ter much  what  you  say  now,  you're  only  talk- 
ing 'for  my  good'  like  Mr.  Lasher.  I  don't 
care,  I  heard  what  you  said  yesterday,  and  it's 
made  all  the  difference.  I'll  come  and  stay 
with  you." 

"Well,  so  you  shall,"  said  Mr.  Pidgen.  "I 
can't  help  it.  You  shall  come  as  often  as  you 
like.  Upon  my  soul,  I'm  younger  to-day  than 
I've  felt  for  a  long  time.  We'll  go  to  the 
pantomime  together  if  you  aren't  too  old 
for  it.  I'll  manage  to  ruin  you  all  right. 
What's  that  shining?"  He  pointed  in  front 
of  him. 

They  had  come  to  a  rise  in  the  Polwint  Eoad. 
To  their  right,  running  to  the  very  foot  of  their 
path,  was  the  moor.  It  stretched  away,  like  a 
cloud,  vague  and  indeterminate  to  the  horizon. 
To  their  left  a  dark  brown  field  rose  in  an  as- 
cending wave  to  a  ridge  that  cut  the  sky,  now 
crocus-coloured.  The  field  was  lit  with  the  soft 


40         THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECROW 

light  of  the  setting  sun.  On  the  ridge  of  the 
field  something,  suspended,  it  seemed,  in  mid- 
air, was  shining  like  a  golden  fire. 

"What's  that?"  said  Mr.  Pidgen  again. 
"It's  hanging.  What  the  devil !" 

They  stopped  for  a  moment,  then  started 
across  the  field.  When  they  had  gone  a  little 
way  Mr.  Pidgen  paused  again. 

"It's  like  a  man  with  a  golden  helmet.  He's 
got  legs,  he's  coming  to  us." 

They  walked  on  again.  Then  Hugh  cried, 
"Why,  it's  only  an  old  Scarecrow.  We  might 
have  guessed." 

The  sun,  at  that  instant,  sank  behind  the 
hills  and  the  world  was  grey. 

The  Scarecrow,  perched  on  the  high  ridge, 
waved  its  tattered  sleeves  in  the  air.  It  was 
an  old  tin  can  that  had  caught  the  light;  the 
can  hanging  over  the  stake  that  supported  it 
in  drunken  fashion  seemed  to  wink  at  them. 
The  shadows  came  streaming  up  from  the  sea 
and  the  dark  woods  below  in  the  hollow  drew 
closer  to  them. 

The  Scarecrow  seemed  to  lament  the  depar- 
ture of  the  light.  "Here,  mind,"  he  said  to 
the  two  of  them,  "you  saw  me  in  my  glory 
just  now  and  don't  you  forget  it.  I  may  be  a 


HUGH  SEYMOUR  41 

knight  in  shining  armour  after  all.  It  only  de- 
pends upon  the  point  of  view.*' 

"So  it  does,"  said  Mr.  Pidgen,  taking  his 
hat  off,  "you  were  very  fine,  I  shan't  forget." 

VI 

THEY  stood  there  in  silence  for  a  time.  .  .  . 

vn 

AT  last  they  turned  back  and  walked  slowly 
home,  the  intimacy  of  their  new  friendship 
growing  with  their  silence.  Hugh  was  happier 
than  he  had  ever  been  before.  Behind  the 
quiet  evening  light  he  saw  wonderful  prospects, 
a  new  life  in  which  he  might  dream  as  he 
pleased,  a  new  friend  to  whom  he  might  tell 
these  dreams,  a  new  confidence  in  his  own 
power.  .  .  . 

But  it  was  not  to  be. 

That  very  night  Mr.  Pidgen  died,  very  peace- 
fully,' in  his  sleep,  from  heart  failure.  He  had 
had,  as  he  had  himself  said,  a  happy  life. 


vni 


YEAES  passed  and  Hugh  Seymour  grew  up.    I 
do  not  wish  here  to  say  much  more  about  him. 


42         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

It  happened  that  when  he  was  twenty-four  his 
work  compelled  him  to  live  in  that  Square  in 
London  known  as  March  Square  (it  will  be  very 
carefully  described  in  a  minute).  Here  he  lived 
for  five  years,  and,  during  that  time,  he  was 
happy  enough  to  gain  the  intimacy  and  con- 
fidence of  some  of  the  children  who  played  in 
the  Gardens  there.  They  trusted  him  and  told 
him  more  than  they  told  many  people.  He 
had  never  forgotten  Mr.  Pidgen;  that  walk, 
that  vision  of  the  Scarecrow,  stood,  as  such 
childish  things  will,  for  a  landmark  in  his  his- 
tory. He  came  to  believe  that  those  experi- 
ences that  he  knew,  in  his  own  life,  to  be  true, 
were  true  also  for  some  others.  That's  as  it 
may  be.  I  can  only  say  that  Barbara  and  An- 
gelina, Bim  and  even  Sarah  Trefusis  were  his 
friends.  I  daresay  his  theory  is  all  wrong. 

I  can  only  say  that  I  know  that  they  were  his 
friends;  perhaps,  after  all,  the  Scarecrow  is 
shining  somewhere  in  golden  armour.  Per- 
haps, after  all,  one  need  not  be  so  lonely  as  one 
often  fancies  that  one  is. 


CHAPTER  I 


HENKY  FITZGEOBGE   STKETHEE 


MARCH  SQUARE  is  not  very  far  from 
Hyde  Park  Corner  in  London  Town. 
Behind  the  whir  and  rattle  of  the  traffic  it 
stands,  spacious  and  cool  and  very  old,  muf- 
fled by  the  little  streets  that  guard  it,  happily 
unconscious,  you  would  suppose,  that  there 
were  any  in  all  the  world  so  unfortunate  as  to 
have  less  than  five  thousand  a  year  for  their 
support.  Perhaps  a  hundred  years  ago  March 
Square  might  boast  of  such  superior  igno- 
rance, but  fashions  change,  to  prevent,  it  may 
be,  our  own  too  easily  irritated  monotonies, 
and,  for  some  time  now,  the  Square  has  been 
compelled,  here,  there,  in  one  corner  and  an- 
other, to  admit  the  invader.  It  is  true  that  the 
solemn,  respectable  grey  house,  No.  3,  can  boast 
that  it  is  the  town  residence  of  His  Grace  the 

43 


44         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

Duke  of  Crole  and  his  beautiful  young  Duchess, 
nee  Miss  Jane  Tunster  of  New  York  City,  but 
it  is  also  true  that  No.  —  -  is  in  the  possession 
of  Mr.  Munty  Ross  of  Potted  Shrimp  fame,  and 
there  are  Dr.  Cruthen,  the  Misses  Dent,  Her- 
bert Hoskins  and  his  wife,  whose  incomes  are 
certainly  nearer  to  £500  than  £5,000.  Yes, 
rents  and  blue  blood  have  come  down  in  March 
Square;  it  is,  certainly,  not  the  less  interest- 
ing for  that,  but 

Some  of  the  houses  can  boast  the  days  of 
good  Queen  Anne  for  their  period.  There  is 
one,  at  the  very  corner  where  Somers  Street 
turns  off  towards  the  Park,  that  was  built  only 
yesterday,  and  has  about  it  some  air  of  shame, 
a  furtive  embarrassment  that  it  will  lose  very 
speedily.  There  is  no  house  that  can  claim 
beauty,  and  yet  the  Square,  as  a  whole,  has  a 
fine  charm,  something  that  age  and  colour, 
haphazard  adventure,  space  and  quiet  have  all 
helped  towards. 

There  is,  perhaps,  no  square  in  London  that 
clings  so  tenaciously  to  any  sign  or  symbol  of 
old  London  that  motor-cars  and  the  increase 
of  speed  have  not  utterly  destroyed.  All  the 
oldest  London  mendicants  find  their  way,  at 
different  hours  of  the  week,  up  and  down  the 


HENRY  FITZGEORGE  STRETHER   45 

Square.  There  is,  I  believe,  no  other  square 
in  London  where  musicians  are  permitted.  On 
Monday  morning  there  is  the  blind  man  with 
the  black  patch  over  one  eye ;  he  has  an  organ 
(a  very  old  one,  with  a  painted  picture  of  the 
Battle  of  Trafalgar  on  the  front  of  it)  and  he 
wears  an  old  black  skull-cap.  He  wheezes  out 
his  old  tunes  (they  are  older  than  other  tunes 
that  March  Square  hears,  and  so,  perhaps, 
March  Square  loves  them).  He  goes  despond- 
ently, and  the  tap  of  his  stick  sounds  all  the 
way  round  the  Square.  A  small  and  dirty  boy 
— his  grandson,  maybe — pushes  the  organ  for 
him.  On  Tuesday  there  comes  the  remnants  of 
a  German  band — remnants  because  now  there 
are  only  the  cornet,  the  flute  and  the  trumpet. 
Sadly  wind-blown,  drunken  and  diseased  they 
are,  and  the  Square  can  remember  when  there 
were  a  number  of  them,  hale  and  hearty  young 
fellows,  but  drink  and  competition  have  been 
too  strong  for  them.  On  Wednesdays  there  is 
sometimes  a  lady  who  sings  ballads  in  a  voice 
that  can  only  be  described  as  that  contradiction 
in  terms  "a  shrill  contralto."  Her  notes  are 
very  piercing  and  can  be  heard  from  one  end 
of  the  Square  to  the  other.  She  sings  "Annie 
Laurie"  and  "Robin  Adair,"  and  wears  a  bat- 


46         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

tered  hat  of  black  straw.  On  Thursday  there  is 
a  handsome  Italian  with  a  barrel  organ  that 
bears  in  its  belly  the  very  latest  and  most  popu- 
lar tunes.  It  is  on  Thursday  that  the  Square 
learns  the  music  of  the  moment ;  thus  from  one 
end  of  the  year  to  the  other  does  it  keep  pace 
with  the  movement. 

On  Fridays  there  is  a  lean  and  ragged  man 
wearing  large  and,  to  the  children  of  the 
Square,  terrifying  spectacles.  He  is  a  very 
gloomy  fellow  and  sings  hymn- tunes,  "Rock  of 
Ages,"  "There  is  a  Happy  Land,"  and  "Jeru- 
salem the  Golden."  On  Saturdays  there  is  a 
stout,  happy  little  man  with  a  harp.  He  has 
white  hair  and  looks  like  a  retired  colonel.  He 
cannot  play  the  harp  very  much,  but  he  is  quite 
the  most  popular  visitor  of  the  week,  and  must 
be  very  rich  indeed  does  he  receive  in  other 
squares  so  handsome  a  reward  for  his  melody 
as  this  one  bestows;  he  is  known  as  "Colonel 
Harry."  In  and  out  of  these  regular  visitors 
there  are,  of  course,  many  others.  There  is  a 
dark,  sinister  man  with  a  harmonium  and  a 
shivering  monkey  on  a  chain;  there  is  an  Ital- 
ian woman,  wearing  bright  wraps  round  her 
head,  and  she  has  a  cage  of  birds  who  tell  for- 
tunes; there  is  a  horsey,  stable-bred,  ferret- 


HENRY  FITZGEOEGE  STEETHEE   47 

>» 
like  man  with  two  performing  dogs,  and  there 

is  quite  an  old  lady  in  a  black  bonnet  and  shawl 
who  sings  duets  with  her  grand-daughter,  a 
young  thing  of  some  fifty  summers. 

There  can  be  nothing  in  the  world  more 
charming  than  the  way  the  Square  receives  its 
friends.  Let  it  number  amongst  its  guests  a 
Duchess,  that  is  no  reason  why  it  should  scorn 
" Colonel  Harry"  or  " Mouldy  Jim,"  the  singer 
of  hymns.  Scorn,  indeed,  cannot  be  found 
within  its  grey  walls,  soft  grey,  soft  green,  soft 
white  and  blue — in  these  colours  is  the  Square 's 
body  clothed,  no  anger  in  its  mild  eyes,  nor 
contempt  anywhere  at  its  heart. 

The  Square  is  proud,  and  is  proud  with  rea- 
son, of  its  garden.  It  is  not  a  large  garden  as 
London  gardens  go.  It  has  in  its  centre  a 
fountain.  Neptune,  with  a  fine  wreath  of  sea- 
weed about  his  middle,  blowing  water  through 
his  conch.  There  are  two  statues,  the  one  of  a 
general  who  fought  in  the  Indian  Mutiny  and 
afterwards  lived  and  died  in  the  Square,  the 
other  of  a  mid- Victorian  philanthropist  whose 
stout  figure  and  urbane  self-satisfaction  (as 
portrayed  by  the  sculptor)  bear  witness  to  an 
easy  conscience  and  an  unimaginative  mind. 
There  is,  round  and  about  the  fountain,  a  lovely 


48         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

green  lawn,  and  there  are  many  overhanging 
trees  and  shady  corners.  An  air  of  peace  the 
garden  breathes,  and  that  although  children 
are  for  ever  racing  up  and  down  it,  shattering 
the  stillness  of  the  air  with  their  cries,  rivalling 
the  bells  of  St.  Matthew's  round  the  corner 
with  their  piercing  notes. 

But  it  is  the  quality  of  the  Square  that  noth- 
ing can  take  from  it  its  peace,  nothing  temper 
its  tranquillity.  In  the  heat  of  the  days  motor- 
cars will  rattle  through,  bells  will  ring,  all  the 
bustle  of  a  frantic  world  invade  its  security; 
for  a  moment  it  submits,  but  in  the  evening 
hour,  when  the  colours  are  being  washed  from 
the  sky,  and  the  moon,  apricot-tinted,  is  rising 
slowly  through  the  smoke,  March  Square  sinks, 
with  a  little  sigh,  back  into  her  peace  again. 
The  modern  world  has  not  yet  touched  her,  nor 
ever  shall. 


THE  Duchess  of  Crole  had  three  months  ago  a 
son,  Henry  Fitzgeorge,  Marquis  of  Strether. 
Very  fortunate  that  the  first-born  should  be  a 
son,  very  fortunate  also  that  the  first-born 
should  be  one  of  the  healthiest,  liveliest,  merri- 


HENRY  FITZGEOBGE  STEETHEB   49 

est  babies  that  it  has  ever  been  any  one's  good 
fortune  to  encounter.  All  smiles,  chuckles  and 
amiability  is  Henry  Fitzgeorge;  he  is  deter- 
mined that  all  shall  be  well. 

His  birth  was  for  a  little  time  the  sensation 
of  the  Square.  Every  one  knew  the  beautiful 
Duchess;  they  had  seen  her  drive,  they  had 
seen  her  walk,  they  had  seen  her  in  the  picture- 
papers,  at  race-meetings  and  coming  away  from 
fashionable  weddings.  The  word  went  round 
day  by  day  as  to  his  health;  he  was  watched 
when  he  came  out  in  his  perambulator,  and 
there  was  gossip  as  to  his  appearance  and  be- 
haviour. 

"A  jolly  little  fellow." 

"Just  like  his  father. " 

"Bather  early  to  say  that,  isn't  it?" 

* '  Well,  I  don 't  know,  got  the  same  smile.  His 
mother's  rather  languid." 

"Beautiful  woman,  though." 

"Oh,  lovely!" 

Upon  a  certain  afternoon  in  March  about 
four  o'clock,  there  was  quite  a  gathering  of 
persons  in  Henry  Fitzgeorge 's  nursery.  There 
was  his  mother,  with  those  two  great  friends 
of  hers,  Lady  Emily  Blanchard  and  the  Hon. 
Mrs.  Vavasour;  there  was  Her  Grace's  mother, 


50         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

Mrs.  P.  Tunster  (an  enormously  stout  lady) ; 
there  was  Miss  Helen  Crasper,  who  was  stay- 
ing in  the  house.  These  people  were  gathered 
at  the  end  of  the  cot,  and  they  looked  down 
upon  Henry  Fitzgeorge,  and  he  lay  upon  his 
back,  gazed  at  them  thoughtfully,  and  clenched 
and  unclenched  his  fat  hands. 

Opposite  his  cot  were  some  very  wide  win- 
dows, and  three  windows  were  filled  with  gal- 
leons of  cloud — fat,  bolster,  swelling  vessels, 
white,  save  where,  in  their  curving  sails,  they 
had  caught  a  faint  radiance  from  the  hidden 
sun.  In  fine  procession,  against  the  blue,  they 
passed  along.  Very  faint  and  muffled  there 
came  up  from  the  Square  the  lingering  notes 
of  "  Robin  Adair."  This  is  a  Wednesday  aft- 
ernoon, and  it  is  the  lady  with  the  black  straw 
hat  who  is  singing.  The  nursery  has  white 
walls — it  is  filled  with  colour;  the  fire  blazes 
with  a  yellow-red  gleam  that  rises  and  falls 
across  the  shining  floor. 

"I  brought  him  a  rattle,  Jane,  dear,"  said 
Mrs.  Tunster,  shaking  in  the  air  a  thing  of 
coral  and  silver.  "He's  got  several,  of  course, 
but  I  guess  you'll  go  a  long  way  before  you  find 
anything  cuter." 

"It's  too  pretty,"  said  Lady  Emily. 


HENRY  FITZQEORGE  STRETHER   51 

"Too  lovely,"  said  the  Hon.  Mrs.  Vavasour. 

The  Duchess  looked  down  upon  her  son. 
* '  Isn  't  he  old  ? ' '  she  said.  ' '  Thousands  of  years. 
You'd  think  he  was  laughing  at  the  lot  of  us." 

Mrs.  Tunster  shook  her  head.  "Now  don't 
you  go  imagining  things,  Jane,  my  dear.  I 
used  to  be  just  like  that,  and  your  father  would 
say,  'Now,  Alice.'  " 

Her  Grace  raised  her  head.  Her  eyes  were 
a  little  tired.  She  looked  from  her  son  to  the 
clouds,  and  then  back  again  to  her  son.  She 
was  remembering  her  own  early  days,  the  rich 
glowing  colour  of  her  own  American  country, 
the  freedom,  the  space,  the  honesty. 

"I  guess  you're  tired,  dear,"  said  her  moth- 
er. "With  the  party  to-night  and  all.  Why 
don't  you  go  and  rest  a  bit?" 

"His  eyes  are  old!    He  does  despise  us  all." 

Lady  Emily,  who  believed  in  personal  com- 
fort and  as  little  thinking  as  possible,  put  her 
arm  through  her  friend's. 

"Come  along  and  give  us  some  tea.  He's  a 
dear.  Good-bye,  you  little  darling.  He  is  a 
pet.  There,  did  you  see  him  smiling?  You 
darling.  Tea  I  must  have,  Jane,  dear — at 
once." 

"You  go  on.    I'm  coming.    Ring  for  it.    Tell 


52         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

Hunter.  I'll  be  with  you  in  two  minutes, 
mother. ' ' 

Mrs.  Tunster  left  her  rattle  in  the  nurse's 
hands.  Then,  with  the  two  others,  departed. 
Outside  the  nursery  door  she  said  in  an  Ameri- 
can whisper:  "Jane  isn't  quite  right  yet. 
"Went  about  a  bit  too  soon.  She's  headstrong. 
She  always  has  been.  Doesn't  do  for  her  to 
think  too  much." 

Her  Grace  was  alone  now  with  her  son  and 
heir  and  the  nurse.  She  bent  over  the  cot  and 
smiled  upon  Henry  Fitzgeorge ;  he  smiled  back 
at  her,  and  even  gave  an  absent-minded  crow; 
but  his  gaze  almost  instantly  swung  back  again 
to  the  window,  through  which,  deeply  and  with 
solemn  absorption,  he  watched  the  clouds. 

She  gave  him  her  hand,  and  he  closed  his 
fingers  about  one  of  hers;  but  even  that  grasp 
was  abstracted,  as  though  he  were  not  thinking 
of  her  at  all,  but  was  simply  behaving  like  a 
gentleman. 

"I  don't  believe  he's  realised  me  a  bit, 
nurse,"  she  said,  turning  away  from  the 
cot. 

"Well,  Your  Grace,  they  always  take  time. 
It's  early  days." 

"But  what's  he  thinking  of  all  the  time?" 


HENRY  FITZGEOEGE  STEETHEE   53 

"Oh,  just  nothing,  Your  Grace." 

"I  don't  believe  it's  nothing.     He's  trying 

to  settle  things.     This — what  it's  all  about — 

what  he's  got  to  do  about  it.'* 

"It  may  be  so,  Your  Grace.    All  babies  are 

like  that  at  first." 

"His  eyes  are  so  old,  so  grave." 

"He's  a  jolly  little  fellow,  Your  Grace." 

"He's  very  little  trouble,  isn't  he?" 

"Less  trouble  than  any  baby  I've  ever  had 

to  do  with.    Got  His  Grace's  happy  tempera- 
ment, if  I  may  say  so. ' ' 

"Yes,"  the  mother  laughed.     She  crossed 

over  to  the  window  and  looked  down.    "That 

poor  woman  singing  down  there.    How  awful! 

He'll  be  going  down  to   Crole  very  shortly, 

Eoberts.    Splendid  air  for  him  there.    But  the 

Square's  cheerful.    He  likes  the  garden,  doesn't 

he!" 

"Oh,  yes,  Your  Grace;  all  the  children  and 

the  fountain.    But  he's  a  happy  baby.    I  should 

say  he'd  like  anything." 

For  a  moment  longer  she  looked  down  into 

the  Square.    The  discordant  voice  was  giving 

"Annie  Laurie"  to  the  world. 
"Good-bye,  darling."    She  stepped  forward, 

shook  the  silver  and  coral  rattle.    "See  what 


54         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

grannie 's  given  you!"    She  left  it  lying  near 
his  hand,  and,  with  a  little  sigh,  was  gone. 


m 

Now,  as  the  sun  was  setting,  the  clouds  had 
broken  into  little  pink  bubbles,  lying  idly  here 
and  there  upon  the  sky.  Higher,  near  the  top 
of  the  window,  they  were  large  pink  cushions, 
three  fat  ones,  lying  sedately  against  the  blue. 
During  three  months  now  Henry  Fitzgeorge 
Strether  had  been  confronted  with  the  new 
scene,  the  new  urgency  on  his  part  to  respond 
to  it.  At  first  he  had  refused  absolutely  to 
make  any  response;  behind  him,  around  him, 
above  him,  below  him,  were  still  the  old  condi- 
tions ;  but  they  were  the  old  conditions  viewed, 
for  some  reason  unknown  to  him,  at  a  distance, 
and  at  a  distance  that  was  ever  increasing. 
With  every  day  something  here  in  this  new 
and  preposterous  world  struck  his  attention, 
and  with  every  fresh  lure  was  he  drawn  more 
certainly  from  his  old  consciousness.  At  first 
he  had  simply  rebelled;  then,  very  slowly,  his 
curiosity  had  begun  to  stir.  It  had  stirred  at 
first  through  food  and  touch;  very  pleasant 
this,  very  pleasant  that. 


HENEY  FITZGEOEGE  STEETHEE   55 

Milk,  sleep,  light  things  that  he  could  hold 
very1  tightly  with  his  hands.  Now,  upon  this 
March  afternoon,  he  watched  the  pink  clouds 
with  a  more  intent  gaze  than  he  had  given  to 
them  before.  Their  colour  and  shape  bore 
some  reference  to  the  life  that  he  had  left. 
They  were  "like"  a  little  to  those  other  things. 
There,  too,  shadowed  against  the  wall,  was  his 
Friend,  his  Friend,  now  the  last  link  with 
everything  that  he  knew. 

At  first,  during  the  first  week,  he  had  de- 
manded again  and  again  to  be  taken  back,  and 
always  he  had  been  told  to  wait,  to  wait  and 
see  what  was  going  to  happen.  So  long  as  his 
Friend  was  there,  he  knew  that  he  was  not  com- 
pletely abandoned,  and  that  this  was  only  a 
temporary  business,  with  its  strange  limiting 
circumstances,  the  way  that  one  was  tied  and 
bound,  the  embarrassment  of  finding  that  all 
one's  old  means  of  communication  were  here 
useless.  How  desperate,  indeed,  would  it 
have  been  had  his  Friend  not  been  there,  reas- 
suring pervading  him,  surrounding  him, 
always  subduing  those  sudden  inexplicable 
alarms. 

He  would  demand:  "When  are  we  going  to 
leave  all  this?" 


56         THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECEOW 

"Wait.  I  know  it  seems  absurd  to  you,  but 
it's  commanded  you." 

"Well,  but — this  is  ridiculous.  Where  are 
all  my  old  powers  ?  Where  are  all  the  others  ? ' ' 

"You  will  understand  everything  one  day. 
I'm  afraid  you're  very  uncomfortable.  You 
will  be  less  so  as  time  passes.  Indeed,  very 
soon  you  will  be  very  happy." 

"Well,  I'm  doing  my  best  to  be  cheerful. 
But  you  won't  leave  me?" 

"Not  so  long  as  you  want  me." 

"You'll  stay  until  we  go  back  again?" 

"You'll  never  go  back  again." 

"Never?" 

"No." 

Across  the  light  the  nurse  advanced.  She  took 
him  in  her  arms  for  a  moment,  turned  his  pil- 
lows, then  layed  him  down  again.  As  he  set- 
tled down  into  comfort  he  saw  his  Friend,  huge, 
a  great  shadow,  mingling  with  the  coloured 
lights  of  the  flaming  sky.  All  the  world  was 
lit,  the  white  room  glowed.  A  pleasant  smell 
was  in  his  nostrils. 

"Where  are  all  the  others?  They  would  like 
to  share  this  pleasant  moment,  and  I  would 
warn  them  about  the  unpleasant  ones." 

* '  They  are  coming,  some  of  them.    I  am  with 


HENEY  FITZGEOEGE  STEETHER   57 

them  as  I  am  with  you."  Swinging  across 
the  Square  were  the  evening  bells  of  St.  Mat- 
thew's. 

Henry  Fitzgeorge  smiled,  then  chuckled, 
then  dozed  into  a  pleasant  sleep. 

IV 

ASLEEP,  awake,  it  had  been  for  the  most  part 
the  same  to  him.  He  swung  easily,  lazily  upon 
the  clouds ;  warmth  and  light  surrounded  him ; 
a  part  of  him,  his  toes,  perhaps,  would  be  sud- 
denly cold,  then  he  would  cry,  or  he  would 
strike  his  head  against  the  side  of  his  cot  and 
it  would  hurt,  and  so  then  he  would  cry  again. 
But  these  tears  would  not  be  tears  of  grief,  but 
simply  declarations  of  astonishment  and  won- 
der. 

He  did  not,  of  course,  realise  that  as,  very 
slowly,  very  gradually  he  began  to  understand 
the  terms  and  conditions  of  his  new  life,  so 
with  the  same  gradation,  his  Friend  was  ex- 
pressed in  those  terms.  Slowly  that  great 
shadow  filled  the  room,  took  on  human  shape, 
until  at  last  it  would  be  only  thus  that  he  would 
appear.  But  Henry  would  not  realise  the 
change,  soon  he  would  not  know  that  it  had 


58         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

ever  been  otherwise.  Dimly,  out  of  chaos,  the 
world  was  being  made  for  him.  There  a  square 
of  colour,  here  something  round  and  hard  that 
was  cool  to  touch,  now  a  gleaming  rod  that  ran 
high  into  the  air,  now  a  shape  very  soft  and 
warm  against  which  it  was  pleasant  to  lean. 
The  clouds,  the  sweep  of  dim  colour,  the  vast 
horizons  of  that  other  world  yielded,  day  by 
day,  to  little  concrete  things — a  patch  of  carpet, 
the  leg  of  a  chair,  the  shadow  of  the  fire,  clouds 
beyond  the  window,  buttons  on  some  one's 
clothes,  the  rails  of  his  cot.  Then  there  were 
voices,  the  touch  of  hands,  some  one's  soft 
hair,  some  one  who  sang  little  songs  to  him. 

He  woke  early  one  morning  and  realised  the 
rattle  that  his  grandmother  had  given  to  him. 
He  suddenly  realised  it.  He  grasped  the  han- 
dle of  it  with  his  hand  and  found  this  cool  and 
pleasant  to  touch.  He  then,  by  accident,  made 
it  tinkle,  and  instantly  the  prettiest  noise  re- 
plied to  him.  He  shook  it  more  lustily  and  the 
response  was  louder.  He  was,  it  seemed,  mas- 
ter of  ,this  charming  thing  and  could  force  it  to 
do  what  he  wished.  He  appealed  to  his  Friend. 
Was  not  this  a  charming  thing  that  he  had 
found!  He  waved  it  and  chuckled  and  crowed, 
and  then  his  toes,  sticking  out  beyond  the  bed- 


HENEY  FITZGEOEGE  STEETHEE   59 

clothes,  were  nipped  by  the  cold  so  that  he 
halloed  loudly.  Perhaps  the  rattle  had  nipped 
his  toes.  He  did  not  know,  but  he  would  cry 
because  that  eased  his  feelings. 

That  morning  there  came  with  his  grand- 
mother and  mother  a  silly  young  woman  who 
had,  it  was  supposed,  a  great  way  with  babies. 
"I  adore  babies,"  she  said.  "We  understand 
one  another  in  the  most  wonderful  way. ' ' 

Henry  Fitzgeorge  looked  at  her  as  she 
leaned  over  the  cot  and  made  faces  at  him. 
"Goo-goo-gum-goo,"  she  cried. 

"What  is  all  this?"  he  asked  his  Friend.  He 
laid  down  the  rattle,  and  felt  suddenly  lonely 
and  unhappy. 

"Little  pet — ug — la — la — goo — losh!"  Hen- 
ry Fitzgeorge  raised  his  eyes.  His  Friend  was 
a  long,  long  way  away ;  his  eyes  grew  cold  with 
contempt.  He  hated  this  thing  that  made  the 
noises  and  closed  out  the  light.  He  opened  his 
eyes,  he  was  about  to  burst  into  one  of  his 
most  abandoned  roars  when  his  stare  encount- 
ered his  mother.  Her  eyes  were  watching  him, 
and  they  had  in  them  a  glow  and  radiance  that 
gave  him  a  warm  feeling  of  companionship.  "I 
know,"  they  seemed  to  say,  "what  you  are 
thinking  of.  I  agree  with  all  that  you  are 


60         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

feeling  about  her.  Only  don't  cry,  she  really 
isn't  worth  it."  His  month  slowly  closed  then 
to  thank  her  for  her  assistance,  he  raised  the 
rattle  and  shook  it  at  her.  His  eyes  never  left 
her  face. 

" Little  darling,"  said  the  lady  friend,  but 
nevertheless  disappointed.  *  *  Lift  him  up,  Jane. 
I'd  like  to  see  him  in  your  arms." 

But  she  shook  her  head.  She  moved  away 
from  the  cot.  Something  so  precious  had  been 
in  that  smile  of  her  son's  that  she  would  not 
risk  any  rebuff. 

Henry  Fitzgeorge  gave  the  strange  lady  one 
last  look  of  disgust. 

"If  that  comes  again  I'll  bite  it,"  he  said  to 
his  Friend. 

When  these  visitors  had  departed,  he  lay 
there  remembering  those  eyes  that  had  looked 
into  his.  All  that  day  he  remembered  them, 
and  it  may  be  that  his  Friend,  as  he  watched, 
sighed  because  the  time  for  launching  him  had 
now  come,  that  one  more  soul  had  passed  from 
his  sheltering  arms  out  into  the  highroad  of 
fine  adventures.  How  easily  they  forget !  How 
readily  they  forget!  How  eagerly  they  fling 
the  pack  of  their  old  world  from  off  their  shoul- 
ders !  He  had  seen,  perhaps,  so  many  go,  thus 


HENEY  FITZGEORGE  STBETHER  61 

lustily,  upon  their  way,  and  then  how  many, 
at  the  end  of  it  all,  tired,  worn,  beaten  to  their 
very  shadows,  had  he  received  at  the  end! 

But  it  was  so.  This  day  was  to  see  Henry 
Fitzgeorge's  assertions  of  his  independence. 
The  hour  when  this  life  was  to  close,  so  defi- 
nitely, so  securely,  the  doors  upon  that  other, 
had  come.  The  shadow  that  had  been  so  vast 
that  it  had  filled  the  room,  the  Square,  the 
world,  was  drawn  now  into  small  and  human 
size. 

Henry  Fitzgeorge  was  never  again  to  look 
so  old. 


As  the  fine,  dim  afternoon  was  closing,  he  was 
allowed,  for  half  an  hour  before  sleep,  to  sprawl 
upon  the  carpet  in  front  of  the  fire.  He  had 
with  him  his  rattle  and  a  large  bear  which  he 
stroked  because  it  was  comfortable;  he  had  no 
personal  feeling  about  it. 

His  mother  came  in. 

"Let  me  have  him  for  half  an  hour,  nurse. 
Come  back  in  half  an  hour's  time." 

The  nurse  left  them. 

Henry  Fitzgeorge  did  not  look  at  his  mother. 


62         THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECROW 

He  had  the  bear  in  his  arms  and  was  feeling  it, 
and  in  his  mind  the  warmth  from  the  nickering, 
jumping  flame  and  the  soft,  friendly  submis- 
sion of  the  fur  beneath  his  fingers  were  part 
of  the  same  mystery. 

His  mother  had  been  motoring;  her  cheeks 
were  flushed,  and  her  dark  clothes  heightened, 
by  their  contrast,  her  colour.  She  knelt  down 
on  the  carpet  and  then,  with  her  hands  folded 
on  her  lap,  watched  her  son.  He  rolled  the 
bear  over  and  over,  he  poked  it,  he  banged  its 
head  upon  the  ground.  Then  he  was  tired  with 
it  and  took  up  the  rattle.  Then  he  was  tired 
of  that,  and  he  looked  across  at  his  mother  and 
chuckled. 

His  mind,  however,  was  not  at  all  concen- 
trated upon  her.  He  felt,  on  this  afternoon,  a 
new,  a  fresh  interest  in  things.  The  carpet 
before  him  was  a  vast  country  and  he  did  not 
propose  to  explore  it,  but  sucking  his  thumb, 
stroking  the  bear's  coat,  feeling  the  firelight 
upon  his  face,  he  felt  that  now  something 
would  occur.  He  had  realised  that  there  was 
much  to  explore  and  that,  after  all,  perhaps 
there  might  be  more  in  this  strange  condition 
of  things  than  he  had  only  a  little  time  ago 
considered  possible.  It  was  then  that  he 


HENEY  FITZGEORGE  STRETHER   63 

looked  np  and  saw  hanging  round  his  mother's 
neck  a  gold  chain.  This  was  a  long  chain  hang- 
ing right  down  to  her  lap;  as  it  hung  there, 
very  slowly  it  swayed  from  side  to  side,  and 
as  it  swayed,  the  firelight  caught  it  and  it 
gleamed  and  was  splashed  with  light.  His 
eyes,  as  he  watched,  grew  rounder  and  round- 
er; he  had  never  seen  anything  so  wonderful. 
He  put  down  the  rattle,  crawled,  with  great  dif- 
ficulty because  of  his  long  clothes,  on  to  his 
knees  and  sat  staring,  his  thumb  in  his  mouth. 
His  mother  stayed,  watching  him.  He  pointed 
his  finger,  crowing.  ''Come  and  fetch  it,"  she 
said. 

He  tumbled  forward  on  to  his  nose  and  then 
lay  there,  with  his  face  raised  a  little,  watching 
it.  She  did  not  move  at  all,  but  knelt  with  her 
hands  straight  out  upon  her  knees,  and  the 
chain  with  its  large  gold  rings  like  flaming 
eyes  swung  from  hand  to  hand.  Then  he  tried 
to  move  forward,  his  whole  soul  in  his  gaze. 
He  would  raise  a  hand  towards  the  treasure 
and  then  because  that  upset  his  balance  he 
would  fall,  but  at  once  he  would  be  up  again. 
He  moved  a  little  and  breathed  little  gasps  of 
pleasure. 

She  bent  forward  to  him,  his  hand  was  out- 


64         THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECROW 

stretched.  His  eyes  went  up  and,  meeting  hers, 
instantly  the  chain  was  forgotten.  That  recog- 
nition that  they  had  given  him  before  was  there 
now. 

With  a  scramble  and  a  lurch,  desperate, 
heedless  in  its  risks,  he  was  in  his  mother's  lap. 
Then  he  crowed.  He  crowed  for  all  the  world 
to  hear  because  now,  at  last,  he  had  become  its 
citizen. 

Was  there  not  then,  from  some  one,  disre- 
garded and  forgotten  at  that  moment,  a  sigh, 
lighter  than  the  air  itself,  half -ironic,  half -wist- 
ful regret? 


CHAPTER  H 


ERNEST   HENBY 


I 


YOUNG  Ernest  Henry  Wilberforce,  who 
had  only  yesterday  achieved  his  sec- 
ond birthday,  watched,  with  a  speculative 
eye,  his  nurse.  He  was  seated  on  the  floor  with 
his  back  to  the  high  window  that  was  flaming 
now  with  the  light  of  the  dying  sun;  his  nurse 
was  by  the  fire,  her  head,  shadowed  huge  and 
fantastic  on  the  wall,  nodded  and  nodded  and 
nodded.  Ernest  Henry  was,  in  figure,  stocky 
and  square,  with  a  head  round,  hard,  and  cov- 
ered with  yellow  curls;  rather  light  and  cold 
blue  eyes  and  a  chin  of  no  mean  degree  were 
further  possessions.  He  was  wearing  a  white 
blouse,  a  white  skirt,  white  socks  and  shoes; 
his  legs  were  fat  and  bulged  above  his  socks; 
his  cold  blue  eyes  never  moved  from  his 
nurse's  broad  back. 

He  knew  that,  in  a  very  short  time,  disturb- 
ance would  begin.    He  knew  that  doors  would 

65 


66         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

open  and  shut,  that  there  would  be  movement, 
strange  noises,  then  an  attack  upon  himself, 
ultimately  a  removal  of  him  to  another  place,  a 
stripping  off  him  of  his  blouse,  his  skirt,  his 
socks  and  his  shoes,  a  loathsome  and  strangely 
useless  application  of  soap  and  water — it  was 
only,  of  course,  in  later  years  that  he  learned 
the  names  of  those  abominable  articles — and, 
finally,  finally  darkness.  All  this  he  felt  hov- 
ering very  close  at  hand ;  one  nod  too  many  of 
his  nurse's  head,  and  up  she  would  start,  off 
she  would  go,  off  he  would  go.  .  .  .  He 
watched  her  and  stroked  very  softly  his  warm, 
fat  calf. 

It  was  a  fine,  spacious  room  that  he  in- 
habited. The  ceiling — very,  very  far  away — 
was  white  and  glimmering  with  shadowy 
spaces  of  gold  flung  by  the  sun  across  the  breast 
of  it.  The  wallpaper  was  dark-red,  and  there 
were  many  coloured  pictures  of  ships  and  dogs 
and  snowy  Christmases,  and  swans  eating  from 
the  hands  of  beautiful  little  girls,  and  one  gar- 
den with  roses  and  peacocks  and  a  tumbling 
fountain.  To  Ernest  Henry  these  were  simply 
splashes  of  colour,  and  colour,  moreover, 
scarcely  so  convincing  as  the  bright  blue  screen 
by  the  fire,  or  the  golden  brown  rug  by  the 


ERNEST  HENRY  67 

door ;  bnt  lie  was  dimly  aware  that,  as  the  days 
passed,  so  did  he  find  more  and  more  to  con- 
sider in  the  shapes  and  sizes  between  the  deep 
black  frames.  .  .  .  There  might,  after  all,  be 
something  in  it. 

But  it  was  not  the  pictures  that  he  was  now 
considering. 

Before  his  nurse's  descent  upon  him  he  was 
determined  that  he  would  walk — not  crawl,  but 
walk  in  his  socks  and  shoes — from  his  place  by 
the  window  to  the  blue  screen  by  the  fire. 
There  had  been  days,  and  those  not  so  long  ago, 
when  so  hazardous  an  Odyssey  had  seemed  the 
vainest  of  Blue  Moon  ambitions;  it  had  once 
been  the  only  rule  of  existence  to  sprawl  and  roll 
and  sprawl  again ;  but  gradually  some  further 
force  had  stirred  his  limbs.  It  was  a  finer 
thing  to  be  upright;  there  was  a  finer  view,  a 
more  lordly  sense  of  possession  could  be  sum- 
moned to  one's  command.  That,  then,  once 
decided,  upright  one  must  be  and  upright,  with 
many  sudden  and  alarming  collapses,  Ernest 
Henry  was. 

He  had  marked  out,  from  the  first,  the  dis- 
tance from  the  wall  to  the  blue  screen  as  a  very 
decent  distance.  There  was,  half-way,  a  large 
rocking-chair  that  would  be  either  a  danger 


68         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

or  a  deliverance,  as  Fate  should  have  it.  Save 
for  this,  it  was,  right  across  the  brown,  rose- 
strewn  carpet,  naked  country.  Truly  a  peril- 
ous business.  As  he  sat  there  and  looked  at  it, 
his  heart  a  little  misgave  him;  in  this  strange, 
new  world  into  which  he  had  been  so  roughly 
hustled,  amongst  a  horde  of  alarming  and 
painful  occurrences,  he  had  discovered  nothing 
so  disconcerting  as  that  sudden  giving  of  the 
knees,  that  rising  of  the  floor  to  meet  you,  the 
collapse,  the  pain,  and  above  all  the  disgrace. 
Moreover,  let  him  fail  now,  and  it  meant,  in 
short,  —  banishment  —  banishment  and  then 
darkness.  There  were  risks.  It  was  the  most 
perilous  thing  that,  in  this  new  country,  he 
had  yet  attempted,  but  attempt  it  he  would. 
.  .  .  He  was  as  obstinate  as  his  chin  could  make 
him. 

With  his  blue  eyes  still  cautiously  upon  his 
nurse's  shadow  he  raised  himself  very  softly, 
his  fat  hand  pressed  against  the  wall,  his  mouth 
tightly  closed,  and  from  between  his  teeth  there 
issued  the  most  distant  relation  of  that  sound 
that  the  traditional  ostler  makes  when  he  is 
cleaning  down  a  horse.  His  knees  quivered, 
straightened;  he  was  up.  Far  away  in  the 
long,  long  distance  were  piled  the  toys  that 


ERNEST  HENRY  69 

yesterday's  birthday  had  given  him.  They  did 
not,  as  yet,  mean  anything  to  him  at  all.  One 
day,  perhaps  when  he  had  torn  the  dolls  limb 
from  limb,  twisted  the  railways  until  they 
stood  end  upon  end  in  sheer  horror,  disem- 
bowelled the  bears  and  golliwogs  so  that  they 
screamed  again,  he  might  have  some  personal 
feeling  for  them.  At  present  there  they  lay 
in  shining  impersonal  newness,  and  there  for 
Ernest  Henry  they  might  lie  for  ever. 

For  an  instant,  his  hand  against  the  wall,  he 
was  straight  and  motionless;  then  he  took  his 
hand  away,  and  his  journey  began.  At  the  first 
movement  a  strange,  an  amazing  glory  filled 
him.  From  the  instant,  two  years  ago,  of  his 
first  arrival  he  had  been  disturbed  by  an  irri- 
tating sense  of  inadequacy ;  he  had  been  sent,  it 
seemed,  into  this  new  and  tiresome  condition 
of  things  without  any  fitting  provisions  for  his 
real  needs.  Demands  were  always  made  upon 
him  that  were,  in  the  absurd  lack  of  ways  and 
means,  impossible  of  fulfilment.  But  now,  at 
last,  he  was  using  the  world  as  it  should  be 
used.  .  .  .  He  was  fine,  he  was  free,  he  was 
absolutely  master.  His  legs  might  shake,  his 
body  lurch  from  side  to  side,  his  breath  come 
in  agitating  gasps  and  whistles;  the  wall  was 


70         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

now  far  behind  him,  the  screen  most  wonder- 
fully near,  the  rocking-chair  almost  within  his 
grasp.  Great  and  mighty  is  Ernest  Henry  Wil- 
berforce,  dazzling  and  again  dazzling  the  light- 
ed avennes  opening  now  before  him;  there  is 
nothing,  nothing,  from  the  rendings  of  the 
toys  to  the  deliberate  defiance  of  his  nurse  and 
all  those  in  authority  over  him,  that  he  shall 
not  now  perform.  .  .  .  With  a  cry,  with  a  wild 
wave  of  the  arms,  with  a  sickening  foretaste  of 
the  bump  with  which  the  gay  brown  carpet 
would  mark  him,  he  was  down,  the  Fates  were 
upon  hun — the  disturbance,  the  disrobing,  the 
darkness.  Nevertheless,  even  as  he  was  car- 
ried, sobbing,  into  the  farther  room,  there  went 
with  him  a  consciousness  that  life  would  never 
again  be  quite  the  dull,  purposeless,  monoto- 
nous thing  that  it  had  hitherto  been. 

n 

APTEB  a  long  time  he  was  alone.  About  him 
the  room,  save  for  the  yellow  night-light  above 
his  head,  was  dark,  humped  with  shadows,  with 
grey  pools  of  light  near  the  windows,  and  a 
golden  bar  that  some  lamp  beyond  the  house 
filing  upon  the  wall  Ernest  Henry  lay  and. 


ERNEST  HENEY  71 

now  and  again,  cautiously  felt  the  bump  on  his 
forehead;  there  was  butter  on  the  bump,  and 
an  interesting  confusion  and  pain  and  impor- 
tance round  and  about  it.  Ernest  Henry's 
eyes  sought  the  golden  bar,  and  then,  lingering 
there,  looked  back  upon  the  recent  adventure. 
He  had  walked;  yes,  he  had  walked.  This 
would,  indeed,  be  something  to  tell  his 
Friend. 

His  friend,  he  knew,  would  be  very  shortly 
with  him.  It  was  not  every  night  that  he  came, 
but  always,  before  his  coming,  Ernest  Henry 
knew  of  his  approach — knew  by  the  happy 
sense  of  comfort  that  stole  softly  about  him, 
knew  by  the  dismissal  of  all  those  fears  and 
shapes  and  terrors  that,  otherwise,  so  easily 
beset  him.  He  sucked  his  thumb  now,  and  felt 
his  bump,  and  stared  at  the  ceiling  and  knew 
that  he  would  come.  During  the  first  months 
after  Ernest  Henry's  arrival  on  this  planet  his 
friend  was  never  absent  from  him  at  all,  was 
always  there,  drawing  through  his  fingers  the 
threads  of  the  old  happy  life  and  the  new 
alarming  one,  mingling  them  so  that  the  transi- 
tion from  the  one  to  the  other  might  not  be 
too  sharp — reassuring,  comforting,  consoling. 
Then  there  had  been  hours  when  he  had  with- 


72         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

drawn  himself,  and  that  earlier  world  had 
grown  a  little  vaguer,  a  little  more  remote,  and 
certain  things,  certain  foods  and  smells  and 
sounds  had  taken  their  place  within  the  circle 
of  realised  facts.  Then  it  had  come  to  be  that 
the  friend  only  came  at  night,  came  at  that 
moment  when  the  nurse  had  gone,  when  the 
room  was  dark,  and  the  possible  beasts — the 
first  beast,  the  second  beast,  and  the  third  beast 
— began  to  creep  amongst  those  cool,  grey  shad- 
ows in  the  hollow  of  the  room.  He  always  came 
then,  was  there  with  his  arm  about  Ernest 
Henry,  his  great  body,  his  dark  beard,  his 
large,  firm  hands — all  so  reassuring  that  the 
beasts  might  do  the  worst,  and  nothing  could 
come  of  it.  He  brought  with  him,  indeed,  so 
much  more  than  himself — brought  a  whole 
world  of  recollected  wonders,  of  all  that  other 
time  when  Ernest  Henry  had  other  things  to 
do,  other  disciplines,  other  triumphs,  other 
defeats,  and  other  glories.  Of  late  his  memory 
of  the  other  time  had  been  untrustworthy. 
Things  during  the  day-time  would  remind  him, 
but  would  remind  him,  nevertheless,  with  a 
strange  mingling  of  the  world  at  present  about 
him,  so  that  he  was  not  sure  of  his  visions. 
But  when  his  friend  was  with  him  the  mem- 


ERNEST  HENRY  73 

cries  were  real  enough,  and  it  was  the  nurse, 
the  fire,  the  red  wallpaper,  the  smell  of  toast, 
the  taste  of  warm  milk,  that  were  faint  and 
shadowy. 

His  friend  was  there,  just  as  always,  sud- 
denly sitting  there  on  the  bed  with  his  arm 
round  Ernest  Henry's  body,  his  dark  beard 
just  tickling  Ernest  Henry's  neck,  his  hand 
tight  about  Ernest  Henry's  hand.  They  told 
one  another  things  in  the  old  way  without  tire- 
some words  and  sounds ;  but,  for  the  benefit  of 
those  who  are  unfortunately  too  aged  to  re- 
member that  old  and  pleasant  intercourse,  one 
must  make  use  of  the  English  language.  Er- 
nest Henry  displayed  his  bump,  and  explained 
its  origin;  and  then,  even  as  he  did  so,  was 
aware  that  the  reality  of  the  bump  made  the 
other  world  just  a  little  less  real.  He  was 
proud  that  he  had  walked  and  stood  up,  and 
had  been  the  master  of  his  circumstance;  but 
just  because  he  had  done  so  he  was  aware 
that  his  friend  was  a  little,  a  very  little 
farther  away  to-night  than  he  had  ever  been 
before. 

"Well,  I'm  very  glad  that  you're  going  to 
stand  on  your  own,  because  you'll  have  to. 
I'm  going  to  leave  you  now — leave  you  for 


74         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

longer,  far  longer  than  I've  ever  left  you  be- 
fore. " 

"Leave  met*' 

'  *  Yes.  I  shan  't  always  be  with  you ;  indeed, 
later  on  you  won't  want  me.  Then  you'll  for- 
get me,  and  at  last  you  won 't  even  believe  that 
I  ever  existed — until,  at  the  end  of  it  all,  I 
come  to  take  you  away.  Then  it  will  all  come 
back  to  you." 

"Oh,  but  that's  absurd!"  Ernest  Henry 
said  confidently.  Nevertheless,  in  his  heart 
he  knew  that,  during  the  day-time,  other 
things  did  more  and  more  compel  his  at- 
tention. There  were  long  stretches  dur- 
ing the  day-time  now  when  he  forgot  his 
friend. 

"After  your  second  birthday  I  always  leave 
you  more  to  yourselves.  I  shall  go  now  for 
quite  a  time,  and  you'll  see  that  when  the  old 
feeling  comes,  and  you  know  that  I'm  coming 
back,  you  '11  be  quite  startled  and  surprised  that 
you'd  got  on  so  well  without  me.  Of  course, 
some  of  you  want  me  more  than  others  do,  and 
with  some  of  you  I  stay  quite  late  in  life. 
There  are  one  or  two  I  never  leave  at  alL 
But  you're  not  like  that;  you'll  get  on  quit© 
well  without  me." 


EENEST  HENRY  75 

"Oh,  no,  I  shan't,"  said  Ernest  Henry,  and 
he  clung  very  tightly  and  was  most  affection- 
ate. But  he  suddenly  put  his  fingers  to  his 
bump,  felt  the  butter,  and  his  chin  shot  up  with 
self-satisfaction. 

"To-morrow  I'll  get  ever  so  much  farther," 
he  said. 

"You'll  behave,  and  not  mind  the  beasts  or 
the  creatures?"  his  friend  said.  "You  must 
remember  that  it's  not  the  slightest  use  to  call 
for  me.  You're  on  your  own.  Think  of  me, 
though.  Don't  forget  me  altogether.  And 
don't  forget  all  the  other  world  in  your  new 
discoveries.  Look  out  of  the  window  some- 
times. That  will  remind  you  more  than  any- 
thing." 

He  had  kissed  him,  had  put  his  hand  for  a 
moment  on  Ernest  Henry's  curls,  and  was 
gone.  Ernest  Henry,  his  thumb  in  his  mouth, 
was  fast  asleep. 

m 

SUDDENLY,  with  a  wild,  agonising  clutch  at  the 
heart,  he  was  awake.  He  was  up  in  bed,  his 
hands,  clammy  and  hot,  pressed  together,  his 
eyes  staring,  his  mouth  dry.  The  yellow  night- 


76         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

light  was  there,  the  bars  of  gold  upon  the  walls, 
the  cool,  grey  shadows,  the  white  square  of 
the  window;  but  there,  surely,  also,  were  the 
beasts.  He  knew  that  they  were  there — one 
crouching  right  away  there  in  the  shadow,  all 
black,  damp ;  one  crawling,  blacker  and  damper, 
across  the  floor;  one — yes,  beyond  question — 
one,  the  blackest  and  cruellest  of  them  all, 
there  beneath  the  bed.  The  bed  seemed  to 
heave,  the  room  flamed  with  terror.  He 
thought  of  his  friend;  on  other  nights  he  had 
invoked  him,  and  instantly  there  had  been  as- 
surance and  comfort.  Now  that  was  of  no 
avail;  his  friend  would  not  come.  He  was  ut- 
terly alone.  Panic  drove  him;  he  thought  that 
there,  on  the  farther  side  of  the  bed,  claws  and 
a  black  arm  appeared.  He  screamed  and 
screamed  and  screamed. 

The  door  was  flung  open,  there  were  lights, 
his  nurse  appeared.  He  was  lying  down  now, 
his  face  towards  the  wall,  and  only  dry,  hard 
little  sobs  came  from  him.  Her  large  red  hand 
was  upon  his  shoulder,  but  brought  no  comfort 
with  it.  Of  what  use  was  she  against  the  three 
beasts?  A  poor  creature.  .  .  .  He  was 
ashamed  that  he  should  cry  before  her.  He 
bit  his  lip. 


ERNEST  HENRY  77 

"Dreaming,  I  suppose,  sir,"  she  said  to  some 
one  behind  her.  Another  figure  came  forward. 
Some  one  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the  bed, 
put  his  arm  round  Ernest  Henry's  body  and 
drew  him  towards  him.  For  one  wild  moment 
Ernest  Henry  fancied  that  his  friend  had,  after 
all,  returned.  But  no.  He  knew  that  these 
were  the  conditions  of  this  world,  not  of  that 
other.  "When  he  crept  close  to  his  friend  he 
was  caught  up  into  a  soft,  rosy  comfort,  was 
conscious  of  nothing  except  ease  and  rest. 
Here  there  were  knobs  and  hard  little  buttons, 
and  at  first  his  head  was  pressed  against  a 
cold,  slippery  surface  that  hurt.  Neverthe- 
less, the  pressure  was  pleasant  and  comforting. 
A  warm  hand  stroked  his  hair.  He  liked  it, 
jerked  his  head  up,  and  hit  his  new  friend's 
chin. 

"Oh,  damn!"  he  heard  quite  clearly.  This 
was  a  new  sound  to  Ernest  Henry;  but  just 
now  he  was  interested  in  sounds,  and  had  learnt 
lately  quite  a  number.  This  was  a  soft,  pleas- 
ant, easy  sound.  He  liked  it. 

And  so,  with  it  echoing  in  his  head,  his  curly 
head  against  his  father's  shoulder,  the  bump 
glistening  in  the  candle-light,  the  beasts  de- 
feated and  derided,  he  tumbled  into  sleep. 


78         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 


IV 

A  PLEASANT  sight  at  breakfast  was  Ernest 
Henry,  with  his  yellow  curls  gleaming  from 
his  bath,  his  bib  tied  firmly  under  his  deter- 
mined chin,  his  fat  fingers  clutching  a  large 
spoon,  his  body  barricaded  into  a  high  chair, 
his  heels  swinging  and  kicking  and  swinging 
again.  Very  fine,  too,  was  the  nursery  on  a 
sunny  morning — the  fire  crackling,  the  roses  on 
the  brown  carpet  as  lively  as  though  they  were 
real,  and  the  whole  place  glittering,  glowing 
with  size  and  cleanliness  and  vigour.  In  the 
air  was  the  crackling  smell  of  toast  and  bacon, 
in  a  glass  dish  was  strawberry  jam,  through 
the  half-open  window  came  all  the  fun  of  the 
Square — the  sparrows,  the  carts,  the  motor- 
cars, the  bells,  and  horses.  .  .  .  Oh,  a  fine 
morning  was  fine  indeed! 

Ernest  Henry,  deep  in  the  business  of  con- 
veying securely  his  bread  and  milk  from  the 
bowl — a  beautiful  bowl  with  red  robins  all 
round  the  outside  of  it — to  his  mouth,  laughed 
at  the  three  beasts.  Let  them  show  themselves 
here  in  the  sunlight,  and  they'd  see  what  they'd 
get.  Let  them  only  dare! 


ERNEST  HENRY  79 

He  surveyed,  with  pleased  anticipation,  the 
probable  progress  of  his  day.  He  glanced  at 
the  pile  of  toys  in  the  farther  corner  of  the 
room,  and  thought  to  himself  that  he  might, 
after  all,  find  some  diversion  there.  Yesterday 
they  had  seemed  disappointing;  to-day  in  the 
glow  of  the  sun  they  suggested  adventure. 
Then  he  looked  towards  that  stretch  of  coun- 
try— that  wall-to-screen  marathon — and,  with 
an  eye  upon  his  nurse,  meditated  a  further  at- 
tempt. He  put  down  his  spoon,  and  felt  his 
bump.  It  was  better;  perchance  there  would 
be  two  bumps  by  the  evening.  And  then,  sud- 
denly, he  remembered.  .  .  .  He  felt  again  the 
terror,  saw  the  lights  and  his  nurse,  then  that 
new  friend.  .  .  .  He  pondered,  lifted  his  spoon, 
waved  it  in  the  air;  and  then  smiling  with  the 
happy  recovery  of  a  pleasant,  friendly  sound, 
repeated  half  to  himself,  half  to  his  nurse: 
"Damn!  Damn!  Damn!" 

That  began  for  him  the  difficulties  of  his  day. 
He  was  hustled,  shaken;  words,  words,  words 
were  poured  down  upon  him.  He  understood 
that,  in  some  strange,  unexpected,  bewildering 
fashion  he  had  done  wrong.  There  was  noth- 
ing more  puzzling  in  his  present  surroundings 
than  that  amazingly  sudden  transition  from  se- 


80         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW] 

renity  to  danger.  Here  one  was,  warm  witH 
food,  bathed  in  sunlight,  with  a  fine,  ripe  day  in 
front  of  one.  .  .  .  Then  the  mere  murmur  of  a 
sound,  and  all  was  tragedy. 

He  hated  his  toys,  his  nurse,  his  food,  his 
world;  he  sat  in  a  corner  of  the  room  and 
glowered.  .  .  .  How  was  he  to  know!  If,  un- 
der direct  encouragement,  he  could  be  induced 
to  say  "dada,"  or  "horse,"  or  "twain,*'  he 
received  nothing  but  applause  and,  often 
enough,  reward.  Yet,  let  him  make  use  of  that 
pleasant  new  sound  that  he  had  learnt,  and  he 
was  in  disgrace.  Upon  this  day,  more  than 
any  other  in  his  young  life,  he  ached,  he  longed 
for  soine  explanation.  Then,  sitting  there  in 
his  corner,  there  came  to  him  a  discovery,  the 
force  of  which  was  never,  throughout  all  his 
later  life,  to  leave  him.  He  had  been  deserted 
by  his  friend.  His  last  link  with  that  other 
life  was  broken.  He  was  here,  planted  in  the 
strangest  of  strange  places,  with  nothing  what- 
ever to  help  him.  He  was  alone ;  he  must  fight 
for  his  own  hand.  He  would — from  that  mo- 
ment, seated  there  beneath  the  window,  Ernest 
Henry  Wilberforce  challenged  the  terrors  of 
this  world,  and  found  them  sawdust — he  would 
say  "damn"  as  often  as  he  pleased.  "Damn, 


EENEST  HENRY  81 

damn,  damn,  damn,"  he  whispered,  and 
marked  again,  with  meditative  eye,  the  space 
from  wall  to  screen. 

After  this,  greatly  cheered,  he  bethought  him 
of  the  Square.  Last  night  his  friend  had  said 
to  him  that  when  he  wished  to  think  of  him,  and 
go  back  for  a  tune  to  the  other  world,  a  peep 
into  the  Square  would  assist  him.  He  clam- 
bered up  on  to  the  window-seat,  caught  behind 
him  those  sounds,  "Now,  Master  Ernest," 
which  he  now  definitely  connected  with  con- 
demnation and  disapproval,  shook  his  curls  in 
defiance,  and  pressed  his  nose  to  the  glass. 
The  Square  was  a  dazzling  sight.  He  had  not 
as  yet  names  for  any  of  the  things  that  he  saw 
there,  nor,  when  he  went  out  on  his  magnifi- 
cent daily  progress  in  his  perambulator  did 
he  associate  the  things  that  he  found  immedi- 
ately around  him  with  the  things  that  he  saw 
from  his  lofty  window;  but,  with  every  ab- 
sorbed gaze  they  stood  more  securely  before 
him,  and  were  fixed  ever  more  firmly  in  his 
memory. 

This  was  a  Square  with  fine,  white,  lofty 
houses,  and  in  the  houses  were  an  infinite  num- 
ber of  windows,  sometimes  gay  and  sometimes 
glittering.  In  the  middle  of  the  Square  was  a 


62         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

garden,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  garden,  very 
clearly  visible  from  Ernest  Henry's  window, 
was  a  fountain.  It  was  this  fountain,  always 
tossing  and  leaping,  that  gave  Ernest  Henry 
the  key  to  his  memories.  Gazing  at  it  he  had 
no  difficulty  at  all  to  find  himself  back  in  the 
old  life.  Even  now,  although  only  two  years 
had  passed,  it  was  difficult  not  to  reveal  his  old 
experiences  by  means  of  terms  of  his  new  dis- 
coveries. He  thought,  for  instance,  of  the  foun- 
tain as  a  door  that  led  into  the  country  whose 
citizen  he  had  once  been,  and  that  country  he 
saw  now  in  terms  of  doors  and  passages  and 
rooms  and  windows,  whereas,  in  reality,  it  had 
been  quite  otherwise. 

But  now,  perched  up  there  on  the  window- 
sill,  he  felt  that  if  he  could  only  bring  the 
fountain  in  with  him  out  of  the  Square  into 
his  nursery,  he  would  have  the  key  to  both  ex- 
istences. He  wanted  to  understand — to  under- 
stand what  was  the  relation  between  his  friend 
who  had  left  last  night,  why  he  might  say 
"dada,"  but  mustn't  say  "damn,"  why,  finally, 
he  was  here  at  all.  He  did  not  consciously 
consider  these  things ;  his  brain  was  only  very 
slightly,  as  yet,  concerned  in  his  discoveries; 
but,  like  a  flowing  river,  beneath  his  move- 


ERNEST  HENEY  83 

ments  and  actions,  the  interplay  of  his  two 
existences  drove  him  on  through  his  adven- 
ture. 

There  were,  of  course,  many  other  things  in 
the  Square  besides  the  fountain.  There  was, 
at  the  farther  corner,  just  out  of  the  Square, 
but  quite  visible  from  Ernest  Henry's  window, 
a  fruit-shop  with  coloured  fruit  piled  high  on 
the  boards  outside  the  windows.  Indeed,  that 
side  street,  of  which  one  could  only  catch  this 
glimpse,  promised  to  be  most  wonderful  al- 
ways; when  evening  came  a  golden  haze  hov- 
ered round  and  about  it.  In  the  garden  itself 
there  were  often  many  children,  and  for  an 
hour  every  afternoon  Ernest  Henry  might  be 
found  amongst  them.  There  were  two  statues 
in  the  Square — one  of  a  gentleman  in  a  beard 
and  a  frock-coat,  the  other  of  a  soldier  riding 
very  finely  upon  a  restless  horse;  but  Ernest 
Henry  was  not,  as  yet,  old  enough  to  realise 
the  meaning  and  importance  of  these  heroes. 

Outside  the  Square  there  were  many  dogs, 
and  even  now  as  he  looked  down  from  his  win- 
dow he  could  see  a  number  of  them,  black  and 
brown  and  white. 

The  trees  trembled  in  a  little  breeze,  the 
fountain  flashed  in  the  sun,  somewhere  a  bar- 


84         THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECROW 

rel-organ  was  playing.  .  .  .  Ernest  Henry  gave 
a  little  sigh  of  satisfaction. 

He  was  back!  He  was  back!  He  was  slip- 
ping, slipping  into  distance  through  the  win- 
dow into  the  street,  under  the  fountain,  its 
glittering  arms  had  caught  him;  he  was  up, 
the  door  was  before  him,  he  had  the  key. 

"Time  for  you  to  put  your  things  on,  Mas- 
ter Ernest.  And  'ow  you've  dirtied  your 
knees!  There!  Look!" 

He  shook  himself,  clambered  down  from  the 
window,  gave  his  nurse  what  she  described  as 
"One  of  his  old,  old  looks.  Might  be  eighty 
when  he's  like  that.  .  .  .  They're  all  like  it 
when  they're  young." 

With  a  sigh  he  translated  himself  back  into 
this  new,  tiresome  existence. 


BUT  after  that  morning  things  were  never 
again  quite  the  same.  He  gave  himself  up 
deliberately  to  the  new  life. 

With  that  serious  devotion  towards  anything 
likely  to  be  of  real  practical  value  to  him  that 
was,  in  his  later  years,  never  to  fail  him,  he 
attacked  this  business  of  "words."  He  dis- 


ERNEST  HENRY  85 

covered  that  if  he  made  certain  sounds  when 
certain  things  were  said  to  him  he  provoked 
instant  applause.  He  liked  popularity;  he 
liked  the  rewards  that  popularity  brought  him. 
He  acquired  a  formula  that  amounted  practic- 
ally to  "Wash  dat?"  And  whenever  he  saw 
anything  new  he  produced  his  question.  He 
learnt  with  amazing  rapidity.  He  was,  his 
nurse  repeatedly  told  his  father,  "a  most  re- 
markable child." 

It  could  not  truthfully  be  said  that  during 
these  weeks  he  forgot  his  friend  altogether. 
There  were  still  the  dark  hours  at  night  when 
he  longed  for  him,  and  once  or  twice  he  had 
cried  aloud  for  him.  But  slowly  that  slipped 
away.  He  did  not  look  often  now  at  the  foun- 
tain. 

There  were  times  when  his  friend  was  al- 
most there.  One  evening,  kneeling  on  the 
floor  before  the  fire,  arranging  shining  soldiers 
in  a  row,  he  was  aware  of  something  that  made 
him  sharply  pause  and  raise  his  head.  He  was, 
for  the  moment,  alone  in  the  room  that  was 
glowing  and  quivering  now  in  the  firelight. 
The  faint  stir  and  crackle  of  the  fire,  the  rich 
flaming  colour  that  rose  and  fell  against  the 
white  ceiling  might  have  been  enough  to  make 


86         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

him  wonder.  But  there  was  also  the  scent  of 
a  clump  of  blue  hyacinths  standing  in  shadow 
by  the  darkened  window,  and  this  scent  caught 
him,  even  as  the  fountain  had  caught  him, 
caught  him  with  the  stillness,  the  leaping  fire, 
the  twisted  sense  of  romantic  splendours  that 
came,  like  some  magician's  smoke  and  flame, 
up  to  his  very  heart  and  brain.  He  did  not 
turn  his  head,  but  behind  him  he  was  sure, 
there  on  the  golden-brown  rug,  his  friend  was 
standing,  watching  him  with  his  smiling  eyes, 
his  dark  beard ;  he  would  be  ready,  at  the  least 
movement,  to  catch  him  up  and  hold  him. 
Swiftly,  Ernest  Henry  turned.  There  was  no 
one  there. 

But  those  moments  were  few  now;  real  peo- 
ple were  intervening.  He  had  no  mother,  and 
this  was  doubtless  the  reason  why  his  nurse 
darkly  addressed  him  as  "Poor  Lamb"  on 
many  occasions ;  but  he  was,  of  course,  at  pres- 
ent unaware  of  his  misfortune.  He  had  an 
aunt,  and  of  this  lady  he  was  aware  only  too 
vividly.  She  was  long  and  thin  and  black,  and 
he  would  not  have  disliked  her  so  cordially,  per- 
haps, had  he  not  from  the  very  first  been  aware 
of  the  sharpness  of  her  nose  when  she  kissed 
him,  Her  nose  hurt  him,  and  so  he  hated  her. 


EKNEST  HENBY  87 

But,  as  lie  grew,  lie  discovered  that  this  hatred 
was  well-founded.'  Miss  Wilberforce  had  not 
a  happy  way  with  children;  she  was  nervous 
when  she  should  have  been  bold,  and  secret 
when  she  should  have  been  honesty  itself. 
When  Ernest  Henry  was  the  merest  atom  in 
a  cradle,  he  discovered  that  she  was  afraid  of 
him ;.  he  hated  the  shiny  stuff  of  her  dress.  She 
wore  a  gold  chain  that — when  you  pulled  it — 
snapped  and  hit  your  fingers.  There  were 
sharp  pins  at  the  back  of  her  dress.  He  hated 
her;  he  was  not  afraid  of  her,  and  yet  on  that 
critical  night  when  his  friend  told  him  of  his 
departure,  it  was  the  fear  of  being  left  alone 
with  the  black  cold  shiny  thing  that  troubled 
him  most;  she  bore  of  all  the  daylight  things 
the  closest  resemblance  to  the  three  beasts. 

There  was,  of  course,  his  nurse,  and  a  great 
deal  of  his  time  was  spent  in  her  company ;  but 
she  had  strangely  little  connection  with  his 
main  problem  of  the  relation  of  this,  his  pres- 
ent world,  to  that,  his  preceding  one.  She  was 
there  to  answer  questions,  to  issue  commands, 
to  forbid.  She  had  the  key  to  various  cup- 
boards— to  the  cupboard  with  pretty  cups  and 
jam  and  sugar,  to  the  cupboard  with  ugly 
things  that  tasted  horrible,  things  that  he  re- 


88         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

sisted  by  instinct  long  before  they  arrived  un- 
der his  nose.  She  also  had  certain  sounds,  of 
which  she  made  invariable  use  on  all  occasions. 
One  was,  "Now,  Master  Ernest!'*  Another: 
"Mind-what-you're-about-now!"  And,  at  his 
"Wash  dat?"  always  " Oh-bother-the-boy ! ' ' 
She  was  large  and  square  to  look  upon,  very 
often  pins  were  in  her  mouth,  and  the  slippers 
that  she  wore  within  doors  often  clipclapped 
upon  the  carpet.  But  she  was  not  a  person; 
she  had  nothing  to  do  with  his  progress. 

The  person  who  had  to  do  with  it  was,  of 
course,  his  father.  That  night  when  his  friend 
had  left  him  had  been,  indeed,  a  crisis,  because 
it  was  on  that  night  that  his  father  had  come 
to  him.  It  was  not  that  he  had  not  been  aware 
of  his  father  before,  but  he  had  been  aware  of 
him  only  as  he  had  been  aware  of  light  and  heat 
and  food.  Now  it  had  become  a  definite  won- 
der as  to  whether  this  new  friend  had  been  sent 
to  take  the  place  of  the  old  one.  Certainly  the 
new  friend  had  very  little  to  do  with  all  that 
old  life  of  which  the  fountain  was  the  door. 
He  belonged,  most  definitely,  to  the  new  one, 
and  everything  about  him — the  delightfully 
mysterious  tick  of  his  gold  watch,  the  solid, 
firm  grasp  of  his  hand,  the  sure  security  of  his 


ERNEST  HENEY  89 

shoulder  upon  which  Ernest  Henry  now  glo- 
riously rode — these  things  were  of  this  world 
and  none  other. 

It  was  a  different  relationship,  this,  from  any 
other  that  Ernest  Henry  had  ever  known,  but 
there  was  no  doubt  at  all  about  its  pleasant 
flavour.  Just  as  in  other  days  he  had  watched 
for  his  friend's  appearance,  so  now  he  waited 
for  that  evening  hour  that  always  brought  his 
father.  The  door  would  open,  the  square,  set 
figure  would  appear.  .  .  .  Very  pleasant,  in- 
deed. Meanwhile  Ernest  Henry  was  instructed 
that  the  right  thing  to  say  on  his  father's  ap- 
pearance was  "Dada." 

But  he  knew  better.  His  father's  name  was 
really  "Damn." 

VI 

THE  days  and  weeks  passed.  There  had  been 
no  sign  of  his  friend.  .  .  .  Then  the  crisis 
came. 

That  old  wall-to-screen  marathon  had  been 
achieved,  and  so  contemptuously  banished. 
There  was  now  the  great  business  of  marching 
without  aid  from  one  end  of  the  room  to  the 
other.  This  was  a  long  business,  and  always 


90         THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECROW 

hitherto  somewhere  about  the  middle  of  it  Er- 
nest Henry  had  sat  down  suddenly,  pretending, 
even  to  himself,  that  his  shoe  hurt,  or  that  he 
was  bored  with  the  game,  and  would  prefer 
some  other. 

There  came,  then,  a  beautiful  spring  evening. 
The  long  low  evening  sun  flooded  the  room,  and 
somewhere  a  bell  was  calling  Christian  people 
to  their  prayers,  and  somewhere  else  the  old 
man  with  the  harp,  who  always  came  round  the 
Square  once  every  week,  was  making  beautiful 
music. 

Ernest  Henry's  father  had  taken  the  nurse's 
place  for  an  hour,  and  was  reading  a  Globe 
with  absorbed  attention  by  the  window;  Mr. 
Wilberforce,  senior,  was  one  of  London's  most 
famous  barristers,  and  the  Globe  on  this  par- 
ticular afternoon  had  a  great  deal  to  say  about 
this  able  man's  cleverness.  Ernest  Henry 
watched  his  father,  watched  the  light,  heard 
the  bell  and  the  harp,  felt  that  the  hour  was 
ripe  for  his  attempt. 

He  started,  and,  even  as  he  did  so,  was  aware 
that,  after  he  had  succeeded  in  this  great  ad- 
venture, things — that  is,  life — would  never  be 
quite  the  same  again.  He  knew  by  now  every 
stage  of  the  first  half  of  his  journey.  The  first 


ERNEST  HENRY  91 

instalment  was  defined  by  that  picture  of  the 
garden  and  the  roses  and  the  peacocks;  the 
second  by  the  beginning  of  the  square  brown 
nursery  table;  and  here  there  was  always  a 
swift  and  very  testing  temptation  to  cling,  with 
a  sticky  hand,  to  the  hard  and  shining  corner. 
The  third  division  was  the  end  of  the  nursery 
table  where  one  was  again  tempted  to  give  the 
corner  a  final  clutch  before  passing  forth  into 
the  void.  After  this  there  was  nothing,  no  rest, 
no  possible  harbour  until  the  end. 

Off  Ernest  Henry  started.  He  could  see  his 
father,  there  in  the  long  distance,  busied  with 
his  paper ;  he  could  see  the  nursery  table,  with 
bright-blue  and  red  reels  of  cotton  that  nurse 
had  left  there ;  he  could  see  a  discarded  railway 
engine  that  lay  gaping  there  half-way  across, 
ready  to  catch  and  trip  him  if  he  were  n6t 
careful.  His  eyes  were  like  saucers,  the  hiss- 
ing noise  came  from  between  his  teeth,  his 
forehead  frowned.  He  passed  the  peacock,  he 
flung  contemptuously  aside  the  proffered  cor- 
ner of  the  table ;  he  passed,  as  an  Atlantic  liner 
passes  the  Eddystone,  the  table's  other  end; 
he  was  on  the  last  stretch. 

Then  suddenly  he  paused.  He  lifted  his 
head,  caught  with  his  eye  a  pink,  round  cloud 


92         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

that  sailed  against  the  evening  blue  beyond 
the  window,  heard  the  harpist,  heard  his  father 
turn  and  exclaim,  as  he  saw  him. 

He  knew,  as  he  stood  there,  that  at  last  the 
moment  had  come.  His  friend  had  returned. 

All  the  room  was  buzzing  with  it.  The  dolls 
fell  in  a  neglected  heap,  the  train  on  the  carpet, 
the  fire  behind  the  fender,  the  reels  of  cotton 
that  were  on  the  table — they  all  knew  it. 

His  friend  had  returned. 

His  impulse  was,  there  and  then,  to  sit  down. 

His  friend  was  whispering:  "Come  along! 
.  .  .  Come  along !  .  .  .  Come  along ! ' '  He  knew 
that,  on  his  surrender,  his  father  would  make 
sounds  like,  "Well,  old  man,  tired,  eh?  Bed,  I 
suggest.'*  He  knew  that  bed  would  follow. 
Then  darkness,  then  his  friend. 

For  an  instant  there  was  fierce  battle  be- 
tween the  old  forces  and  the  new.  Then,  with 
his  eyes  upon  his  father,  resuming  that  hiss 
that  is  proper  only  to  ostlers,  he  continued  his 
march. 

He  reached  the  wall.  He  caught  his  father's 
leg.  He  was  raised  on  to  his  father's  lap,  was 
kissed,  was  for  a  moment  triumphant;  then 
suddenly  burst  into  tears. 

"Why,  old  man,  what's  the  matter?" 


EKNEST  HENKY  93 

But  Ernest  Henry  could  not  explain.  Had 
he  but  known  it  he  had,  in  that  rejection  of  his 
friend,  completed  the  first  stage  of  his  ''Pil- 
grimage from  this  world  to  the  next." 


CHAPTER  HE 


ANGELINA 


ANGELINA  BRAID,  on  the  morning  of 
her  third  birthday,  woke  very  early.  It 
would  be  too  much  to  say  that  she  knew  it  was 
her  birthday,  but  she  awoke,  excited.  She 
looked  at  the  glimmering  room,  heard  the  spar- 
rows beyond  her  windows,  heard  the  snoring  of 
her  nurse  in  the  large  bed  opposite  her  own, 
and  lay  very  still,  with  her  heart  thumping  like 
anything.  She  made  no  noise,  however,  be- 
cause it  was  not  her  way  to  make  a  noise.  An- 
gelina Braid  was  the  quietest  little  girl  in  all 
the  Square.  "You'd  never  meet  one  nigher  a 
mouse  in  a  week  of  Sundays,"  said  her  nurse, 
who  was  a  "gay  one"  and  liked  life. 

It  was  not,  however,  entirely  Angelina's  fault 
that  she  took  life  quietly ;  in  21  March  Square, 
it  was  exceedingly  difficult  to  do  anything  else. 

94 


ANGELINA  95 

Angelina's  parents  were  in  India,  and  she  was 
not  conscious,  very  acutely,  of  their  existence. 
Every  morning  and  evening  she  prayed,  ' '  God 
bless  mother  and  father  in  India,"  but  then 
she  was  not  very  acutely  conscious  of  God 
either,  and  so  her  mind  was  apt  to  wander 
during  her  prayers. 

She  lived  with  her  two  aunts — Miss  Emmy 
Braid  and  Miss  Violet  Braid — in  the  smallest 
house  in  the  Square.  So  slim  was  No.  21,  and 
so  ruthlessly  squeezed  between  the  opulent  No. 
20  and  the  stout  ruddy-faced  No.  22,  that  it 
made  one  quite  breathless  to  look  at  it;  it  was 
exactly  as  though  an  old  maid,  driven  by  suf- 
fragette wildness,  had  been  arrested  by  two  of 
the  finest  possible  policemen,  and  carried  off 
into  custody.  Very  little  of  any  kind  of  wild- 
ness  was  there  about  the  Misses  Braid.  They 
were  slim,  neat  women,  whose  rather  yellow 
faces  had  the  flat,  squashed  look  of  lawn  grass 
after  a  garden  roller  has  passed  over  it.  They 
believed  in  God  according  to  the  Reverend 
Stephen  Hunt,  of  St.  Matthew-in-the-Crescent 
—the  church  round  the  corner — but  in  no  other 
kind  of  God  whatever.  They  were  not  rich,  and 
they  were  not  poor;  they  went  once  a  week — 
Fridays — to  visit  the  poor  of  St.  Matthew's, 


96         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECKOW 

and  found  the  poor  of  St.  Matthew's  on  the 
whole  unappreciative  of  their  efforts,  but  that 
made  their  task  the  nobler.  Their  house  was 
dark  and  musty,  and  filled  with  little  articles 
left  them  by  their  grand-parents,  their  parents, 
and  other  defunct  relations.  They  had  no 
friendly  feeling  towards  one  another,  but 
missed  one  another  when  they  were  separated. 
They  were,  both  of  them,  as  strong  as  horses, 
but  very  hypochondriacal,  and  Dr.  Armstrong 
of  Mulberry  Place  made  a  very  pleasant  little 
income  out  of  them. 

I  have  mentioned  them  at  length,  because 
they  had  a  great  deal  to  do  with  Angelina's 
quiet  behaviour.  No.  21  was  not  a  house  that 
welcomed  a  child's  ringing  laughter.  But,  in 
any  case,  the  Misses  Braid  were  not  fond  of 
children,  but  only  took  Angelina  because  they 
had  a  soft  spot  in  their  dry  hearts  for  their 
brother  Jim,  and  in  any  case  it  would  have 
been  difficult  to  say  no. 

Their  attitude  to  children  was  that  they  could 
not  understand  why  they  did  not  instantly  see 
things  as  they,  their  elders,  saw  them;  but 
then,  on  the  other  hand,  if  an  especially  bright 
child  did  take  a  grown-up  point  of  view  about 


ANGELINA  97 

anything  that  was  considered  "forward"  and 
"conceited,"  so  that  it  was  really  very  diffi- 
cult for  Angelina. 

"It's  a  pity  Jim's  got  such  a  dull  child," 
Miss  Violet  would  say.  "You  never  would 
have  expected  it." 

"What  I  like  about  a  child,"  said  Miss 
Emmy,  "is  a  little  cheerfulness  and  natural 
spirit — not  all  this  moping." 

Angelina  was  not,  on  the  whole,  popular. 
.  .  .  The  aunts  had  very  little  idea  of  making 
a  house  cheerful  for  a  child.  The  room  allot- 
ted to  Angelina  as  a  nursery  was  at  the  top 
of  the  house,  and  had  once  been  a  servant's 
bedroom.  It  possessed  two  rather  grimy  win- 
dows, a  faded  brown  wallpaper,  an  old  green 
carpet,  and  some  very  stiff,  hard  chairs.  On 
one  wall  was  a  large  map  of  the  world,  and  on 
the  other  an  old  print  of  Eomans  sacking  Jeru- 
salem, a  picture  which  frightened  Angelina 
every  night  of  her  life,  when  the  dark  came  and 
the  lamp  illuminated  the  writhing  limbs,  the 
falling  bodies,  the  tottering  walls.  From  the 
windows  the  Square  was  visible,  and  at  the 
windows  Angelina  spent  a  great  deal  of  her 
time,  but  her  present  nurse — nurses  succeeded 
one  another  with  startling  frequency — objected 


98         THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

to  what  she  called  "  window-gazing. "  "  Makes 
a  child  dreamy,"  she  said;  "lowers  her 
spirits. ' ' 

Angelina  was,  naturally,  a  dreamy  child, 
and  no  amount  of  nurses  could  prevent  her  be- 
ing one.  She  was  dreamy  because  her  loneli- 
ness forced  her  to  be  so,  and  if  her  dreams 
were  the  most  real  part  of  her  day  to  her  that 
was  surely  the  faults  of  her  aunts.  But  she 
was  not  at  all  a  quick  child;  although  to-day 
was  her  third  birthday  she  could  not  talk  very 
well,  could  not  pronounce  her  r's,  and  lisped  in 
what  her  trail  of  nurses  told  her  was  a  ridicu- 
lous fashion  for  so  big  a  girl.  But,  then,  she 
was  not  really  a  big  girl;  her  figure  was  short 
and  stumpy,  her  features  plain  and  pale  with 
the  pallor  of  her  first  Indian  year.  Her  eyes 
were  large  and  black  and  rather  fine. 

On  this  morning  she  lay  in  bed,  and  knew 
that  she  was  excited  because  her  friend  had 
come  the  night  before  and  told  her  that  to-day 
would  be  an  important  day.  Angelina  clung, 
with  a  desperate  tenacity,  to  her  memories  of 
everything  that  happened  to  her  before  her  ar- 
rival on  this  unpleasant  planet.  Those  mem- 
ories now  were  growing  faint,  and  they  came 
to  her  only  in  flashes,  in  sudden  twists  and 


ANGELINA  99 

turns  of  the  scene,  as  though  she  were  sur- 
rounded by  curtains  and,  every  now  and  then, 
was  allowed  a  peep  through.  Her  friend  had 
been  with  her  continually  at  first,  and,  whilst 
he  had  been  there,  the  old  life  had  been  real 
and  visible  enough ;  but  on  her  second  birthday 
he  had  told  her  that  it  was  right  now  that  she 
should  manage  by  herself.  Since  then,  he  had 
come  when  she  least  expected  him;  sometimes 
when  she  had  needed  him  very  badly  he  had 
not  appeared.  .  .  .  She  never  knew.  At  any 
rate,  he  had  said  that  to-day  would  be  impor- 
tant. .  .  .  She  lay  in  bed,  listening  to  her 
nurse's  snores,  and  waited. 

n 

AT  breakfast  she  knew  that  it  was  her  birthday* 
There  were  presents  from  her  aunts — a  pic- 
ture-book and  a  box  of  pencils — there  was  also 
a  mysterious  parcel.  Angelina  could  not  re- 
member that  she  had  ever  had  a  parcel  before, 
and  the  excitement  of  this  one  must  be  pro- 
longed. She  would  not  open  it,  but  gazed  at  it, 
with  her  spoon  in  the  air  and  her  mouth  wide 
open. 
' '  Come,  Miss  Angelina— what  a  name  to  give 


the  poor  lamb! — get  on  with  your  breakfast 
now,  or  you  '11  never  have  done.  Why  not  open 
the  pretty  parcel?" 

"No.    Do  you  think  it  is  a  twain?" 

"Say  train — not  twain." 

"Train." 

"No,  of  course  not;  not  a  thing  that  shape." 

"Oh!    Do  you  think  it's  a  bear?" 

"Maybe — maybe.  Come  now,  get  on  with 
your  bread  and  butter." 

"Don't  want  any  more." 

"Get  down  from  your  chair,  then.  Say  your 
grace  now." 

"Thank  God  nice  bweakfast,  Amen." 

' '  That 's  right !    Now  open  it,  then. ' ' 

"No,  not  now." 

"Drat  the  child!  Well,  wipe  your  face, 
then." 

Angelina  carried  her  parcel  to  the  window, 
and  then,  after  gazing  at  it  for  a  long  time,  at 
last  opened  it.  Her  eyes  grew  wider  and  wider, 
her  chubby  fingers  trembled.  Nurse  undid  the 
wrappings  of  paper,  slowly  folded  up  the 
sheets,  then  produced,  all  naked  and  un- 
ashamed, a  large  rag  doll. 

"There!  There's  a  pretty  thing  for  you, 
Miss  'Lina," 


ANGELINA  101 

She  had  her  hand  about  the  doll's  head,  and 
held  her  there,  suspended. 

''Give  her  me!  Give  her  me!"  Angelina 
rescued  her,  and,  with  eyes  flaming,  the  doll 
laid  lengthways  in  her  arms,  tottered  off  to 
the  other  corner  of  the  room. 

''"Well,  there's  gratitude, "  said  the  nurse, 
"and  never  asking  so  much  as  who  it's  from." 

But  nurse,  aunts,  all  the  troubles  and  disap- 
pointments of  this  world  had  vanished  from 
Angelina's  heart  and  soul.  She  had  seen,  at 
that  first  glimpse  that  her  nurse  had  so  rudely 
given  her,  that  here  at  last,  after  long,  long 
waiting,  was  the  blessing  that  she  had  so  de- 
sired. She  had  had  other  dolls — quite  a  num- 
ber of  them.  Even  now  Lizzie  (without  an 
eye)  and  Kachel  (rather  fine  in  bridesmaid's 
attire)  were  leaning  their  disconsolate  backs 
against  the  boarding  beneath  the  window  seat. 
There  had  been,  besides  Rachel  and  Lizzie,  two 
Annies,  a  Mary,  a  May,  a  Blackamoor,  a  Jap,  a 
Sailor,  and  a  Baby  in  a  Bath.  They  were  now 
as  though  they  had  never  been ;  Angelina  knew 
with  absolute  certainty  of  soul,  with  that  blend- 
ing of  will  and  desire,  passion,  self-sacrifice  and 
absence  of  humour  that  must  inevitably  accom- 
pany true  love  that  here  was  her  Fate. 


102       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

"It's  been  sent  you  by  your  kind  Uncle 
Teny,"  said  nurse.  "You'll  have  to  write  a 
nice  letter  and  thank  him." 

But  Angelina  knew  better.  She — a  name  had 
not  yet  been  chosen — had  been  sent  to  her  by 
her  friend.  .  .  .  He  had  promised  her  last  night 
that  this  should  be  a  day  of  days. 

Her  aunts,  appearing  to  receive  thanks  where 
thanks  were  due,  darkened  the  doorway. 

"Good-morning,  mum.  Good-morning, mum. 
Now,  Miss  'Lina,  thank  your  kind  aunties  for 
their  beautiful  presents." 

She  stood  up,  clutching  the  doll. 

"T'ank  you,  Auntie  Vi'let;  t'ank  you,  Auntie 
Em'ly — your  lovely  pwesents." 

"That's  right,  Angelina.  I  hope  you'll  use 
them  sensibly.  What's  that  she's  holding, 
nurse!" 

"It's  a  doll  Mr.  Edward's  sent  her,  mum." 

"What  a  hideous  creature!  Edward  might 
have  chosen  something—  Time  for  her  to  go 
out,  nurse,  I  think — now,  while  the  sun's 
warm. ' ' 

But  she  did  not  hear.  She  did  not  know  that 
they  had  gone.  She  sat  there  in  a  dreamy 
ecstasy  rocking  the  red-cheeked  creature  in 


ANGELINA 

her  arms,  seeing,  with  her  black  eyes,  visions 
and  the  beauty  of  a  thousand  worlds. 


rn 

THE  name  Eose  was  given  to  her.  Eose  had 
been  kept,  as  a  name,  until  some  one  worthy 
should  arrive.  .  .  .  "Wosie  Bwaid,"  a  very 
good  name.  Her  nakedness  was  clothed  first  in 
Eachel's  bridesmaid's  attire — alas!  poor  Ea- 
chel ! — but  the  lace  and  finery  did  not  suit  those 
flaming  red  cheeks  and  beady  black  eyes.  Eose 
was,  there  could  be  no  question,  a  daughter  of 
the  soil ;  good  red  blood  ran  through  her  stout 
veins.  Tess  of  the  countryside,  your  laughing, 
chaffing,  arms-akimbo  dairymaid ;  no  poor  white 
product  of  the  over-civilised  cities.  Angelina 
felt  that  the  satin  and  lace  were  wrong;,  she 
tore  them  off,  searched  in  the  heaped-up  cup- 
board for  poor  neglected  Annie  No.  1,  found 
her,  tore  from  her  her  red  woollen  skirt  and 
white  blouse,  stretched  them  about  Eose 's  port- 
ly body. 

"T'ank  God  for  nice  Wose,  Amen,"  she  said,, 
but  she  meant,  not  God,  but  her  friend.  He, 
her  friend,  had  never  sent  her  anything  before, 
and  now  that  Eose  had  come  straight  from  him, 


104        THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

she  must  have  a  great  deal  to  tell  her  about 
him.  Nothing  puzzled  her  more  than  the  dis- 
tressing fact  that  she  wondered  sometimes 
whether  her  friend  was  ever  really  coming 
again,  whether  any  of  the  wonderful  things 
that  were  happening  on  every  side  of  her 
wouldn't  suddenly  one  fine  morning  vanish  al- 
together, and  leave  her  to  a  dreary  world  of 
nurse,  bread  and  milk,  and  the  Romans  sacking 
Jerusalem.  She  didn't,  of  course,  put  it  like 
that;  all  that  it  meant  to  her  was  that  stupid 
people  and  tiresome  things  were  always  inter- 
fering between  herself  and  real  fun.  Now  it 
was  time  to  go  out,  now  to  go  to  bed,  now  to  eat, 
now  to  be  taken  downstairs  into  that  horrid 
room  where  she  couldn't  move  because  things 
would  tumble  off  the  tables  so  ...  all  this  pre- 
vented her  own  life  when  she  would  sit  and  try, 
and  try,  and  remember  what  it  was  all  like 
once,  and  wonder  why  when  once  things  had 
been  so  beautiful  they  were  so  ugly  and  dis- 
appointing now. 

Now  Rose  had  come,  and  she  could  talk  to 
Rose  about  it.  "What  she  sees  in  that  ugly 
old  doll!"  said  the  nurse  to  the  housemaid. 
"You  can  take  my  word,  Mary,  she'll  sit  in  that 
window  looking  down  at  the  gardens,  nursing 


ANGELINA  105 

that  rag  and  just  say  nothing.  It  fair  gives 
you  the  creeps  .  .  .  left  too  much  to  herself, 
the  poor  child  is.  As  for  those  old  women 
downstairs,  if  I  'ad  my  way — but  there !  Liv- 
ing's  living,  and  bread  and  butter's  bread  and 
butter!" 

But,  of  course,  Angelina's  heart  was  burst- 
ing with  affection,  and  there  had  been,  until 
Eose's  arrival,  no  one  upon  whom  she  might 
bestow  it.  Eose  might  seem  to  the  ordinary 
observer  somewhat  unresponsive.  She  sat 
there,  whether  it  were  tea-time,  dressing- time, 
bed-time,  always  staring  in  front  of  her,  her 
mouth  closed,  her  arms,  bow-shaped,  standing 
stiffly  away  from  her  side,  taking,  it  might 
seem,  but  little  interest  in  her  mistress's  con- 
fidences. Did  one  give  her  tea  she  only 
dribbled  at  the  lip ;  did  one  place  upon  her  head 
a  straw  hat  with  red  ribbon  torn  from  poor 
May — once  a  reigning  favourite — she  made  no 
effort  to  keep  it  upon  her  head.  Jewels  and 
gold  could  rouse  no  appreciation  from  her ;  she 
was  sunk  in  a  lethargy  that  her  rose-red  cheeks 
most  shamefully  belied. 

But  Angelina  had  the  key  to  her.  Angelina 
understood  that  confiding  silence,  appreciated 
that  tactful  discretion,  adored  that  complete 


106        THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

submission  to  her  will.  It  was  true  that  her 
friend  had  only  come  once  to  her  now  within 
the  space  of  many,  many  weeks,  but  he  had 
sent  her  Rose.  "He's  coming  soon,  Wose — 
weally  soon — to  tell  us  stowies.  Bu-ootiful 
ones." 

She  sat,  gazing  down  into  the  Square,  and 
her  dreams  were  longer  and  longer  and  longer. 

IV 

Miss  EMILY  BRAID  was  a  softer  creature  than 
her  sister,  and  she  had,  somewhere  in  her  heart, 
some  sort  of  affection  for  her  niece.  She  made, 
now  and  then,  little  buccaneering  raids  upon 
the  nursery,  with  the  intention  of  arriving  at 
some  intimate  terms  with  that  strange  animal. 
But  she  had  no  gift  of  ease  with  children;  her 
attempts  at  friendliness  were  viewed  by  Ange- 
lina with  the  gravest  suspicion  and  won  no 
return.  This  annoyed  Miss  Emily,  and  because 
she  was  conscious  that  she  herself  was  in  real- 
ity to  blame,  she  attacked  Angelina  all  the  more 
fiercely.  "This  brooding  must  be  stopped," 
she  said.  "Really,  it's  most  unhealthy." 

It  was  quite  impossible  for  her  to  believe 
that  a  child  of  three  could  really  be  interested 


ANGELINA  107 

by  golden  sunsets,  the  colours  of  the  fountain 
that  was  in  the  centre  of  the  gardens,  the  soft, 
grey  haze  that  clothed  the  houses  on  a  spring 
evening;  and  when,  therefore,  she  saw  Ange- 
lina gazing  at  these  things,  she  decided  that  the 
child  was  morbid.  Any  interest,  however,  that 
Angelina  may  have  taken  in  her  aunts  before 
Rose's  arrival  was  now  reduced  to  less  than 
nothing  at  all. 

"That  doll  that  Edward  gave  the  child," 
said  Miss  Emily  to  her  sister,  "is  having  a 
very  bad  effect  on  her.  Makes  her  more  moody 
than  ever." 

"Such  a  hideous  thing!"  said  Miss  Violet. 
"Well,  I  shall  take  it  away  if  I  see  much  more 
of  this  nonsense." 

It  was  lucky  for  Rose  meanwhile  that 
she  was  of  a  healthy  constitution.  The  meals, 
the  dressing  and  undressing,  the  perpetual  de- 
mands upon  her  undivided  attention,  the  sud- 
den rousings  from  her  sleep,  the  swift  rockings 
back  into  slumber  again,  the  appeals  for  re- 
sponse, the  abuses  for  indifference,  these  things 
would  have  slain  within  a  week  one  of  her  more 
feeble  sisters.  But  Rose  was  made  of  stern 
stuff,  and  her  rosy  cheeks  were  as  rosy,  the 
brightness  of  her  eyes  was  undimmed.  We 


108        THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

may  believe — and  surely  many  harder  demands 
are  made  upon  our  faith — that  there  did  arise 
a  very  special  relationship  between  these  two. 
The  whole  of  Angelina's  heart  was  now  de- 
voted to  Rose's  service,  and  how  can  we  tell 
that  the  whole  of  Rose's  was  not  devoted  to 
Angelina?  .  .  .  And  always  Angelina  wondered 
when  her  friend  would  return,  watched  for  him 
in  the  dusk,  awoke  in  the  early  mornings  and 
listened  for  him,  searched  the  Square  with  its 
trees  and  its  fountain  for  his  presence. 

"Wosie,  when  did  he  say  he'd  come  next!" 
But  Rose  could  not  tell.  There  were  times 
when  Rose's  impenetrability  was,  to  put  it  at 
its  mildest,  aggravating. 

Meanwhile,  the  situation  with  Aunt  Emily 
grew  serious.  Angelina  was  aware  that  Aunt 
Emily  disliked  Rose,  and  her  mouth  now  shut 
very  tightly  and  her  eyes  glared  defiance  when 
she  thought  of  this,  but  her  difference  with  her 
aunt  went  more  deeply  than  this.  She  had 
known  for  a  long,  long  time  that  both  her  aunts 
would  stop  her  "dreaming"  if  they  could.  Did 
she  tell  them  about  her  friend,  about  the  kind 
of  pictures  of  which  the  fountain  reminded  her, 
about  the  vivid,  lively  memories  that  the  tree 
with  the  pink  flowers — the  almond  tree — in  the 


ANGELINA  109 

corner  of  the  gardens — you  could  just  see  it 
from  the  nursery  window — called  to  her  mind ; 
she  knew  that  she  would  be  punished — put  in 
the  corner,  or  even  sent  to  bed.  She  did  not 
think  these  things  out  consecutively  in  her 
mind,  but  she  knew  that  the  dark  room  down- 
stairs, the  dark  passages,  the  stillness  and  si- 
lence of  it  all  frightened  her,  and  that  it  was 
always  out  of  these  things  that  her  aunts 
rose. 

At  night  when  she  lay  in  bed  with  Kosie 
clasped  tightly  to  her,  she  whispered  endlessly 
about  the  gardens,  the  fountain,  the  barrel  or- 
gans, the  dogs,  the  other  children  in  the  Square 
— she  had  names  of  her  own  for  all  these  things 
— and  him,  who  belonged,  of  course,  to  the 
world  outside.  .  .  .  Then  her  whisper  would 
sink,  and  she  would  warn  Eose  about  the  rooms 
downstairs,  the  dining-room  with  the  black 
chairs,  the  soft  carpet,  and  the  stuffed  birds  in 
glass  cases — for  these  things,  too,  she  had 
names.  Here  was  the  hand  of  death  and  de- 
struction, the  land  of  crooked  stairs,  sudden 
dark  doors,  mysterious  bells  and  drippings  of 
water — out  of  all  this  her  aunts  came.  .  .  . 

Unfortunately  it  was  just  at  this  moment 
that  Miss  Emily  Braid  decided  that  it  was  time 


110       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

to  take  her  niece  in  hand.  * '  The  child 's  three, 
Violet,  and  very  backward  for  her  age.  Why, 
Mrs.  Mancaster's  little  girl,  who's  just  Ange- 
lina's age,  can  talk  fluently,  and  is  beginning 
with  her  letters.  We  don't  want  Jim  to  be 
disappointed  in  the  child  when  he  comes 
home  next  year."  It  would  be  difficult  to  de- 
termine how  much  of  this  was  true ;  Miss  Emily 
was  aggravated  and,  although  she  would  never 
have  confessed  to  so  trivial  a  matter,  the  per- 
petual worship  of  Rose — * '  the  ugliest  thing  you 
ever  saw"— was  irritating  her.  The  days  fol- 
lowed, then,  when  Angelina  was  constantly  in 
her  aunt 's  company,  and  to  neither  of  them  was 
this  companionship  pleasant. 

"You  must  ask  me  questions,  child.  How 
are  you  ever  going  to  learn  to  talk  properly  if 
you  don't  ask  me  questions!" 

"Yes,  auntie." 

"What's  that  over  there!" 

"Twee." 

"Say  tree,  not  twee." 

"Tree." 

"Now  look  at  me.  Put  that  wretched  doll 
down.  .  .  .  Now.  .  .  .  That's  right.  Now  tell 
me  what  you've  been  doing  this  morning." 

"We  had  bweakfast — nurse   said   I — (long 


ANGELINA  111 

pause  for  breath) — was  dood  girl;  Auntie 
Vi'let  came;  I  dwew  with  my  pencil." 

"Say  'drew,'  not  'dwew.'  : 

"Drew." 

All  this  was  very  exhausting  to  Aunt  Emily. 
She  was  no  nearer  the  child's  heart.  .  .  .  An- 
^gelina  maintained  an  impenetrable  reserve. 
Old  maids  have  much  time  amongst  the  unsat- 
isfied and  sterile  monotonies  of  their  life — this 
is  only  true  of  some  old  maids ;  there  are  very 
delightful  ones — to  devote  to  fancies  and  micro- 
scopic imitations.  It  was  astonishing  now  how 
largely  in  Miss  Emily  Braid's  life  loomed  the 
figure  of  Rose,  the  rag  doll. 

"If  it  weren't  for  that  wretched  doll,  I  be- 
lieve one  could  get  some  sense  out  of  the 
child." 

"I  think  it's  a  mistake,  nurse,  to  let  Miss 
Angelina  play  with  that  doll  so  much." 

"Well,  mum,  it'd  be  difficult  to  take  it  from 
her  now.  She 's  that  wrapped  in  it. "  .  .  .  And 
so  she  was.  .  .  .  Rose  stood  to  Angelina  for  so 
much  more  than  Rose. 

"Oh,  Wosie,  when  will  he  come  again.  .  .  . 
P'r'aps  never.  And  I'm  forgetting.  I  can't 
remember  at  all  about  the  funny  water  and  the 
twee  with  the  flowers,  and  all  of  it.  Wosie,  you 


112        THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

'member — Whisper. "  And  Rose  offered  in  her 
own  mysterious,  taciturn  way  the  desired  com- 
fort. 

And  then,  of  course,  the  crisis  arrived.  I 
am  sorry  about  this  part  of  the  story.  Of  all 
the  invasions  of  Aunt  Emily,  perhaps  none 
were  more  strongly  resented  by  Angelina  than 
the  appropriation  of  the  afternoon  hour  in  the 
gardens.  Nurse  had  been  an  admirable  escort 
because,  as  a  lady  of  voracious  appetite  for  life 
with,  at  the  moment,  but  slender  opportunities 
for  satisfying  it,  she  was  occupied  alertly  with 
the  possible  vision  of  any  male  person  driven 
by  a  similar  desire.  Her  eye  wandered;  the 
hand  to  which  Angelina  clung  was  an  abstract, 
imperceptive  hand — Angelina  and  Rose  were 
free  to  pursue  their  own  train  of  fancy — the 
garden  was  at  their  service.  But  with  Aunt 
Emily  how  different !  Aunt  Emily  pursued  re- 
lentlessly her  educational  tactics.  Her  thin, 
damp,  black  glove  gripped  Angelina's  hand; 
her  eyes  (they  had  a  "peering"  effect,  as 
though  they  were  always  searching  for  some- 
thing beyond  their  actual  vision)  wandered 
aimlessly  about  the  garden,  looking  for  educa- 
tional subjects.  And  so  up  and  down  the  paths 
they  went,  Angelina  trotting,  with  Rose  clasped 


ANGELINA  113 

to  her  breast,  walking  just  a  little  faster  than 
she  conveniently  could. 

Miss  Emily  disliked  the  gardens,  and  would 
have  greatly  preferred  that  nurse  should  have 
been  in  charge,  but  this  consciousness  of  trial 
inflamed  her  sense  of  merit.  There  came  a 
lovely  spring  afternoon ;  the  almond  tree  was  in 
full  blossom;  a  cloud  of  pink  against  the  green 
hedge,  clumps  of  daffodils  rippled  with  little 
shudders  of  delight,  even  the  statues  of  "Sir 
Benjamin  Bundle"  and  "General  Sir  Eobinson 
Cleaver"  seemed  to  unbend  a  little  from  their 
stiff  angularity.  There  were  many  babies  and 
nurses,  and  children  laughing  and  crying  and 
shouting,  and  a  sky  of  mild  forget-me-not  blue 
smiled  protectingly  upon  them.  Angelina's 
eyes  were  fixed  upon  the  fountain,  which 
flashed  and  sparkled  in  the  air  with  a  happy 
freedom  that  seemed  to  catch  all  the  life  of  the 
garden  within  its  heart.  Angelina  felt  how  im- 
mensely she  and  Eose  might  have  enjoyed  all 
this  had  they  been  alone.  Her  eyes  gazed  long- 
ingly at  the  almond  tree;  she  wished  that  she 
might  go  off  on  a  voyage  of  discovery  for,  on 
this  day  of  all  days,  did  its  shadow  seem  to  hold 
some  pressing,  intimate  invitation.  "I  shall 
get  back — I  shall  get  back.  .  .  .  He'll  come  and 


114        THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

take  me;  I'll  remember  all  the  old  things,"  she 
thought.  She  and  Rose — what  a  time  they 
might  have  if  only—  She  glanced  up  at  her 
aunt. 

"Look  at  that  nice  little  boy,  Angelina," 
Aunt  Emily  said.  "See  how  good—  But 

at  that  very  instant  that  same  playful  breeze 
that  had  been  ruffling  the  daffodils,  and  send- 
ing shimmers  through  the  fountain  decided  that 
now  was  the  moment  to  catch  Miss  Emily's 
black  hat  at  one  corner,  prove  to  her  that  the 
pin  that  should  have  fastened  it  to  her  hair  was 
loose,  and  swing  the  whole  affair  to  one  side. 
Up  went  her  hands;  she  gave  a  little  cry  of 
dismay. 

Instantly,  then,  Angelina  was  determined. 
She  did  not  suppose  that  her  freedom  would  be 
for  long,  nor  did  she  hope  to  have  time  to  reach 
the  almond  tree;  but  her  small,  stumpy  legs 
started  off  down  the  path  almost  before  she 
was  aware  of  it.  She  started,  and  Rose  bumped 
against  her  as  she  ran.  She  heard  behind  her 
cries ;  she  saw  in  front  of  her  the  almond  tree, 
and  then  coming  swiftly  towards  her  a  small 
boy  with  a  hoop.  .  .  .  She  stopped,  hesitated, 
and  then  fell.  The  golden  afternoon,  with  all 
its  scents  and  sounds,  passed  on  above  her 


ANGELINA  115 

head.  She  was  conscious  that  a  hand  was  on 
her  shoulder,  she  was  lifted  and  shaken.  Tears 
trickling  down  the  side  of  her  nose  were 
checked  by  little  points  of  gravel.  She  was 
aware  that  the  little  boy  with  the  hoop  had 
stopped  and  said  something.  Above  her,  very 
large  and  grim,  was  her  aunt.  Some  bird  on  a 
tree  was  making  a  noise  like  the  drawing  of  a 
cork.  (She  had  heard  her  nurse  once  draw 
one.)  In  her  heart  was  utter  misery.  The 
gravel  hurt  her  face,  the  almond  tree  was  far- 
ther away  than  ever;  she  was  captured  more 
completely  than  she  had  ever  been  before. 

"Oh,  you  naughty  little  girl — you  naughty 
girl,"  she  heard  her  aunt  say;  and  then,  after 
her,  the  bird  like  a  cork.  She  stood  there,  her 
mouth  tightly  shut,  the  marks  of  tears  drying 
to  muddy  lines  on  her  face. 

She  was  dragged  off.  Aunt  Emily  was  fu- 
rious at  the  child's  silence;  Aunt  Emily  was 
also  aware  that  she  must  have  looked  what 
she  would  call  "a  pretty  figure  of  fun"  with 
her  hat  askew,  her  hair  blown  "anyway,"  and 
a  small  child  of  three  escaping  from  her  charge 
as  fast  as  she  could  go. 

Angelina  was  dragged  across  the  street,  in 
through  the  squeezed  front  door,  over  the  dark 


116       THE  GOLDEN  SCAKECROW 

stairs,  up  into  the  nursery.  Miss  Violet's  voice 
was  heard  calling,  "Is  that  you,  Emily!  Tea's 
been  waiting  some  time." 

It  was  nurse's  afternoon  out,  and  the  nurs- 
ery was  grimly  empty;  but  through  the  open 
window  came  the  evening  sounds  of  the  happy 
Square.  Miss  Emily  placed  Angelina  in  the 
middle  of  the  room.  "Now  say  you're  sorry, 
you  wicked  child!"  she  exclaimed  breathlessly. 

"Sowwy,"  came  slowly  from  Angelina. 
Then  she  looked  down  at  her  doll. 

"Leave  that  doll  alone.  Speak  as  though  you 
were  sorry." 

"I'm  velly  sowwy." 

"What  made  you  run  away  like  that?"  An- 
gelina said  nothing.  "Come,  now!  Didn't  you 
know  it  was  very  wicked?" 

"Yes." 

"Well,  why  did  you  do  it,  then?" 

"Don't  know." 

' '  Don 't  say  '  don 't  know '  like  that.  You  must 
have  had  some  reason.  Don't  look  at  the  doll 
like  that.  Put  the  doll  down."  But  this  An- 
gelina would  not  do.  She  clung  to  Rose  with  a 
ferocious  tenacity.  I  do  not  think  that  one 
must  blame  Miss  Emily  for  her  exasperation, 
That  doll  had  had  a  large  place  in  her  mind  for 


ANGELINA  117 

many  weeks.  It  were  as  though  she,  Miss 
Emily  Braid,  had  been  personally,  before  the 
world,  defied  by  a  rag  doll.  Her  temper,  whose 
control  had  never  been  her  strongest  quality, 
at  the  vision  of  the  dirty,  obstinate  child  before 
her,  at  the  thought  of  the  dancing,  mocking 
gardens  behind  her,  flamed  into  sudden,  trem- 
bling rage. 

She  stepped  forward,  snatched  Rose  from 
Angelina's  arms,  crossed  the  room  and  had 
pushed  the  doll,  with  a  fierce,  energetic  action, 
as  though  there  was  no  possible  time  to  be  lost, 
into  the  fire.  She  snatched  the  poker,  and  with 
trembling  hands  pressed  the  doll  down.  There 
was  a  great  flare  of  flame ;  Eose  lifted  one  stolid 
arm  to  the  gods  for  vengeance,  then  a  stout  leg 
in  a  last  writhing  agony.  Only  then,  when  it 
was  all  concluded,  did  Aunt  Emily  hear  behind 
her  the  little  half-strangled  cry  which  made  her 
turn.  The  child  was  standing,  motionless,  with 
so  old,  so  desperate  a  gaze  of  despair  that  it 
was  something  indecent  for  any  human  being  to 
watch. 


NUESE  came  in  from  her  afternoon.    She  had 
heard  nothing  of  the  recent  catastrophe,  and, 


118        THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

as  she  saw  Angelina  sitting  quietly  in  front  of 
the  fire  she  thought  that  she  had  had  her  tea, 
and  was  now  "dreaming"  as  she  so  often  did. 
Once,  however,  as  she  was  busy  in  another  part 
of  the  room,  she  caught  half  the  face  in  the 
light  of  the  fire.  To  any  one  of  a  more  percep- 
tive nature  that  glimpse  must  have  seemed  one 
of  the  most  tragic  things  in  the  world.  But 
this  was  a  woman  of  "a  sensible,  hearty"  na- 
ture; moreover,  her  "afternoon"  had  left  her 
with  happy  reminiscences  of  her  own  charms 
and  their  effect  on  the  opposite  sex. 

She  had,  however,  her  moment.  .  .  .  She  had 
left  the  room  to  fetch  something.  Returning 
she  noticed  that  the  dusk  had  fallen,  and  was 
about  to  switch  on  the  light  when,  in  the  rise 
and  fall  of  the  firelight,  something  that  she  saw 
made  her  pause.  She  stood  motionless  by  the 
door. 

Angelina  had  turned  in  her  chair;  her  eyes 
were  gazing,  with  rapt  attention,  toward  the 
purple  dusk  by  the  window.  She  was  listening. 
Nurse,  as  she  had  often  assured  her  friends, 
"was  not  cursed  with  imagination,"  but  now 
fear  held  her  so  that  she  could  not  stir  nor 
move  save  that  her  hand  trembled  against  the 
wall  paper.  The  chatter  of  the  fire,  the  shouts 


ANGELINA  119 

of  some  boys  in  the  Square,  the  ringing  of  the 
bell  of  St.  Matthew's  for  evensong,  all  these 
things  came  into  the  room.  Angelina,  still  lis- 
tening, at  last  smiled;  then,  with  a  little  sigh, 
sat  back  in  her  chair. 

' '  Heavens !  Miss  'Lina !  What  were  you  do- 
ing there  ?  How  you  frightened  me ! "  Ange- 
lina left  her  chair,  and  went  across  to  the  win- 
dow. ''Auntie  Emily,"  she  said,  "put  Wosie 
into  the  fire,  she  did.  But  Wosie 's  saved.  .  .  . 
He's  just  come  and  told  me." 

"Lord,  Miss  'Lina,  how  you  talk!"  The 
room  was  right  again  now  just  as,  a  moment 
before,  it  had  been  wrong.  She  switched  on  the 
electric  light,  and,  in  the  sudden  blaze,  caught 
the  last  flicker  in  the  child's  eyes  of  some  vision, 
caught,  held,  now  surrendered. 

"  'Tis  company  she's  wanting,  poor  lamb," 
she  thought,  "all  this  being  alone.  .  .  .  Fair 
gives  one  the  creeps." 

She  heard  with  relief  the  opening  of  the 
door.  Miss  Emily  came  in,  hesitated  a  mo- 
ment, then  walked  over  to  her  niece.  In  her 
hands  she  carried  a  beautiful  doll  with  flaxen 
hair,  long  white  robes,  and  the  assured  confi- 
dence of  one  who  is  spotless  and  knows  it. 

"There,  Angelina,"  she  said.     "I  oughtn't 


120       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

to  have  burnt  your  doll.  I'm  sorry.  Here's  a 
beautiful  new  one." 

Angelina  took  the  spotless  one^  then  with  a 
little  thrust  of  her  hand  she  pushed  the  half- 
open  window  wider  apart.  Very  deliberately 
she  dropped  the  doll  (at  whose  beauty  she  had 
not  glanced)  out,  away,  down  into  the  Square. 

The  doll,  white  in  the  dusk,  tossed  and 
whirled,  and  spun  finally,  a  white  speck  far  be- 
low, and  struck  the  pavement. 

Then  Angelina  turned,  and  with  a  little  sigh 
of  satisfaction  looked  at  her  aunt. 


CHAPTER  IV 


BIM   EOCHESTEB 


THIS  is  the  story  of  Bim  Rochester's  first 
Odyssey.  It  is  a  story  that  has  Bim 
himself  for  the  only  proof  of  its  veracity,  but 
he  has  never,  by  a  shadow  of  a  word,  faltered 
in  his  account  of  it,  and  has  remained  so  un- 
amazed  at  some  of  the  strange  aspects  in  it 
that  it  seems  almost  an  impertinence  that  we 
ourselves  should  show  any  wonder.  Benjamin 
(Bim)  Rochester  was  probably  the  happiest 
little  boy  in  March  Square,  and  he  was  happy 
in  spite  of  quite  a  number  of  disadvantages. 

A  word  about  the  Rochester  family  is  here 
necessary.  They  inhabited  the  largest  house 
in  March  Square — the  large  grey  one  at  the 
corner  by  Lent  Street — and  yet  it  could  not  be 
said  to  be  large  enough  for  them.  Mrs.  Roches- 
ter was  a  black-haired  woman  with  flaming 

121 


122       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

cheeks  and  a  most  untidy  appearance.  Her 
mother  had  been  a  Spaniard,  and  her  father  an 
English  artist,  and  she  was  very  much  the  child 
of  both  of  them.  Her  hair  was  always  coming 
down,  her  dress  unfastened,  her  shoes  untied, 
her  boots  unbuttoned.  She  rushed  through  life 
with  an  amazing  shattering  vigour,  bearing 
children,  flinging  them  into  an  already  over- 
crowded nursery,  rushing  out  to  parties,  filling 
the  house  with  crowds  of  friends,  acquaint- 
ances, strangers,  laughing,  chattering,  singing, 
never  out  of  temper,  never  serious,  never,  for 
a  moment,  to  be  depended  on.  Her  husband,  a 
grave,  ball-faced  man,  spent  most  of  his  days 
in  the  City  and  at  his  club,  but  was  fond  of  his 
wife,  and  admired  what  he  called  her  "  ener- 
gy." ''My  wife's  splendid,"  he  would  say  to 
his  friends,  "knows  the  whole  of  London,  I 
believe.  The  people  we  have  in  our  house!" 
He  would  watch,  sometimes,  the  strange,  noisy 
parties,  and  then  would  retire  to  bridge  at  his 
club  with  a  little  sigh  of  pride. 

Meanwhile,  upstairs  in  the  nursery  there 
were  children  of  all  ages,  and  two  nurses  did 
their  best  to  grapple  with  them.  The  nurses 
came  and  went,  and  always,  after  the  first  day 
or  two,  the  new  nurse  would  give  in  to  the 


BIM  ROCHESTER  123 

conditions,  and  would  lead,  at  first  with  amuse- 
ment and  a  rather  excited  sense  of  adventure, 
afterwards  with  a  growing  feeling  of  dirt  and 
discomfort,  a  tangled  and  helter-skelter  exist- 
ence. Some  of  the  children  were  now  at  school, 
but  Lucy,  a  girl  ten  years  of  age,  was  a  super- 
cilious child  who  rebelled  against  the  conditions 
of  her  life,  but  was  too  idle  and  superior  to  at- 
tempt any  alteration  of  them.  After  her  there 
were  Roger,  Dorothy,  and  Robert.  Then  came 
Bim,  four  years  of  age  a  fortnight  ago,  and, 
last  of  all,  Timothy,  an  infant  of  nine  months. 
With  the  exception  of  Lucy  and  Bim  they  were 
exceedingly  noisy  children.  Lucy  should  have 
passed  her  days  in  the  schoolroom  under  the 
care  of  Miss  Agg,  a  melancholy  and  hope- 
abandoned  spinster,  and,  during  lesson  hours, 
there  indeed  she  was.  But  in  the  schoolroom 
she  had  no  one  to  impress  with  her  amazing 
wisdom  and  dignity.  ''Poor  mummy,"  as  she 
always  thought  of  her  mother,  was  quite  un- 
aware of  her  habits  or  movements,  and  Miss 
Agg  was  unable  to  restrain  either  the  one  or 
the  other,  so  Lucy  spent  most  of  her  time  in 
the  nursery,  where  she  sat,  calm  and  collected, 
in  the  midst  of  confusion  that  could  have 
" given  old  Babel  points  and  won  easy."  She 


124       THE  GOLDEN  SCABECROW 

was  reverenced  by  all  the  younger  children 
for  her  sedate  security,  but  by  none  of  them  so 
surely  and  so  magnificently  as  Bim.  Bim,  be- 
cause he  was  quieter  than  the  other  children, 
claimed  for  his  opinions  and  movements  the 
stronger  interest 

His  nurses  called  him  "deep,"  " although  for 
a  deep  child  I  must  say  he's  'appy." 

Both  his  depth  and  his  happiness  were  at 
Lucy's  complete  disposal.  The  people  who  saw 
him  in  the  Square  called  him  "a  jolly  little 
boy,"  and,  indeed,  his  appearance  of  gravity 
was  undermined  by  the  curl  of  his  upper  lip  and 
a  dimple  in  the  middle  of  his  left  cheek,  so  that 
he  seemed  to  be  always  at  the  crisis  of  a  pro- 
longed chuckle.  One  very  rarely  heard  him 
laugh  out  loud,  and  his  sturdy,  rather  fat  body 
was  carried  rather  gravely,  and  he  walked  con- 
templatively as  though  he  were  thinking  some- 
thing out.  He  would  look  at  you,  too,  very 
earnestly  when  you  spoke  to  him,  and  would 
wait  a  little  before  he  answered  you,  and  then 
would  speak  slowly  as  though  he  were  choosing 
his  words  with  care.  And  yet  he  was,  in  spite 
of  these  things,  really  a  "jolly  little  boy. "  His 
"jolliness"  was  there  in  point  of  view,  in  the 
astounding  interest  he  found  in  anything  and 


BIM'  EOCHESTEE  125 

everything,  in  his  refusal  to  be  upset  by  any 
sort  of  thing  whatever. 

But  his  really  unusual  quality  was  his  mix- 
ture of  stolid  English  matter-of-fact  with  an 
absolutely  unbridled  imagination.  He  would 
pursue,  day  by  day,  week  after  week,  games, 
invented  games  of  his  own,  that  owed  nothing, 
either  for  their  inception  or  their  execution,  to 
any  one  else.  They  had  their  origin  for  the 
most  part  in  stray  sentences  that  he  had  over- 
heard from  his  elders,  but  they  also  arose  from 
his  own  private  and  personal  experiences — ex- 
periences which  were  as  real  to  him  as  going 
to  the  dentist  or  going  to  the  pantomime  were 
to  his  brothers  and  sisters.  There  was,  for  in- 
stance, a  gentleman  of  whom  he  always  spoke 
of  as  Mr.  Jack.  This  friend  no  one  had  ever 
seen,  but  Bim  quoted  him  frequently.  He  did 
not,  apparently,  see  him  very  often  now,  but  at 
one  time  when  he  had  been  quite  a  baby  Mr. 
Jack  had  been  always  there.  Bim  explained, 
to  any  one  who  cared  to  listen,  that  Mr.  Jack 
belonged  to  all  the  Other  Time  which  he  was 
now  in  very  serious  danger  of  forgetting,  and 
when,  at  that  point,  he  was  asked  with  con- 
descending indulgence,  "I  suppose  you  mean 
fairies,  dear?"  he  always  shook  his  head 


126       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

scornfully  and  said  he  meant  nothing  of  the 
kind,  Mr.  Jack  was  as  real  as  mother,  and,  in- 
deed, a  great  deal  "realer,"  because  Mrs. 
Rochester  was,  in  the  course  of  her  energetic 
career,  able  to  devote  only  "whirlwind"  visits 
to  her  "dear,  darling"  children. 

When  the  afternoon  was  spent  in  the  gar- 
dens in  the  middle  of  the  Square,  Bim  would 
detach  himself  from  his  family  and  would  be 
found  absorbed  in  some  business  of  his  own 
which  he  generally  described  as  "waiting  for 
Mr.  Jack." 

"Not  the  sort  of  child,"  said  Miss  Agg, 
who  had  strong  views  about  children  being  edu- 
cated according  to  practical  and  common-sense 
ideas,  "not  the  sort  of  child  that  one  would 
expect  nonsense  from. ' '  It  may  be  quite  safely 
asserted  that  never,  in  her  very  earliest  years, 
had  Miss  Agg  been  guilty  of  any  nonsense  of 
the  sort. 

But  it  was  not  Miss  Agg's  contempt  for  hia 
experiences  that  worried  Bim.  He  always  re- 
garded that  lady  with  an  amused  indifference. 
"She  bothers  so,"  he  said  once  to  Lucy.  "Do 
you  think  she's  happy  with  us,  Lucy!" 

"P'r'aps.    I'm  sure  it  doesn't  matter." 

"I  suppose  she'd  go  away  if  she  wasn't," 


BIM  EOCHESTER  127 

lie  concluded,  and  thought  no  more  about 
her. 

No,  the  real  grief  in  his  heart  was  that 
Lucy,  the  adored,  the  wonderful  Lucy,  treated 
his  assertions  with  contempt. 

"But,  Bim,  don't  be  such  a  silly  baby.  You 
know  you  can't  have  seen  him.  Nurse  was 
there  and  a  lot  of  us,  and  we  didn't." 

1  'I  did  though." 

"But,  Bim " 

"Can't  help  it.  He  used  to  come  lots  and 
lots." 

"You  are  a  silly!  You're  getting  too  old 
now— 

"I'm  not  a  silly!" 

"Yes,  you  are." 

"I'm  not!" 

"Oh,  well,  of  course,  if  you're  going  to  be  a 
naughty  baby." 

Bim  was  nearer  tears  on  these  occasions 
than  on  any  other  in  all  his  mortal  life.  His 
adoration  of  Lucy  was  the  foundation-stone  of 
his  existence,  and  she  accepted  it  with  a  lofty 
assumption  of  indifference;  but  very  sharply 
would  she  have  missed  it  had  it  been  taken  from 
her,  and  in  long  after  years  she  was  to  look  back 
upon  that  love  of  his  and  wonder  that  she  could 


128       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECEOW 

have  accepted  it  so  lightly;  Bim  found  in  her 
gravity  and  assurance  all  that  he  demanded  of 
his  elders.  Lucy  was  never  at  a  loss  for  an 
answer  to  any  question,  and  Bim  believed  all 
that  she  told  him. 

"Where's  China,  Lucy?" 

"Oh,  don't  bother,  Bim." 

"No,  but  where  is  it?" 

"What  a  nuisance  you  are!  It's  near 
Africa." 

"Where  Uncle  Alfred  is?" 

"Yes,  just  there." 

"But  is  Uncle  Alfred  in— China?" 

"No,  silly,  of  course  not." 

"Well,  then " 

"I  didn't  say  China  was  in  Africa,  I  said 
it  was  near." 

"Oh!  I  see.  Uncle  Alfred  could  just  go  in 
the  train  ? ' ' 

"Yes,  of  course." 

"Oh!    I  see.    P'r'aps  he  will" 

But,  for  the  most  part,  Bim,  realising  that 
Lucy  "didn't  want  to  be  bothered,"  pursued 
his  life  alone.  Through  all  the  turmoil  and 
disorder  of  that  tempestuous  nursery  he  grave- 
ly went  his  way,  at  one  moment  fighting  lions 
and  tigers,  at  another  being  nurse  on  her  after- 


BIM  EOCHESTEE  129 

noon  out  (this  was  a  truly  astonishing  adven- 
ture composed  of  scraps  flung  to  him  from 
nurse's  conversational  table  and  including 
many  incidents  that  were  far  indeed  from  any; 
nurse's  experience),  or  again,  he  would  be  his 
mother  giving  a  party,  and,  in  the  course  of 
this,  a  great  deal  of  food  would  be  eaten,  his 
favourite  dishes,  treacle  pudding  and  cottage 
pie,  being  always  included. 

With  the  exception  of  his  enthusiasm  for 
Lucy  he  was  no  sentimentalist.  He  hated  being 
kissed,  he  did  not  care  very  greatly  for  Eoger 
and  Dorothy  and  Eobert,  and  regarded  them 
as  nothing  but  nuisances  when  they  interfered 
with  his  games  or  compelled  him  to  join  in 
theirs. 

And  now  this  is  the  story  of  his  Odyssey. 


n 

IT  happened  on  a  wet  April  afternoon.  The 
morning  had  been  fine,  a  golden  morning  with 
the  scent  in  the  air  of  the  showers  that  had 
fallen  during  the  night.  Then,  suddenly,  after 
midday,  the  rain  came  down,  splashing  on  to 
the  shining  pavements  as  it  fell,  beating  on  to 
the  windows  and  then  running,  in  little  lines, 


130       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

on  to  the  ledges  and  falling  from  there  in  slow, 
heavy  drops.  The  sky  was  black,  the  statues 
in  the  garden  dejected,  the  almond  tree  beaten, 
all  the  little  paths  running  with  water,  and  on 
the  garden  seats  the  rain  danced  like  a  live 
thing. 

The  children — Lucy,  Roger,  Dorothy,  Robert, 
Bim,  and  Timothy — were,  of  course,  in  the  nur- 
sery. The  nurse  was  toasting  her  toes  on  the 
fender  and  enjoying  immensely  that  story  by 
Mrs.  Henry  Wood,  entitled  "The  Shadow  of 
Ashlydyat."  It  is  entirely  impossible  to  pre- 
sent any  adequate  idea  of  the  confusion  and 
bizarrerie  of  that  nursery.  One  must  think  of 
the  most  confused  aspect  of  human  life  that 
one  has  ever  known — say,  a  Suffrage  attack 
upon  the  Houses  of  Parliament,  or  a  Channel 
steamer  on  a  Thursday  morning,  and  then  of 
the  next  most  confused  aspect.  Then  one  must 
place  them  together  and  confess  defeat.  Mrs. 
Rochester  was  not,  as  I  have  said,  very  fre- 
quently to  be  found  in  her  children's  nursery, 
but  she  managed,  nevertheless,  to  pervade  the 
house,  from  cellar  to  garret,  witji  her  spirit. 
Toys  were  everywhere — dolls  and  trains  and 
soldiers,  bricks  and  puzzles  and  animals,  card- 
board boxes,  articles  of  feminine  attire,  a  zinc 


BIM  KOCHESTEE  131 

bath,  two  cats,  a  cage  with  white  mice,  a  pile  of 
books  resting  in  a  dazzling  pyramid  on  the  very 
edge  of  the  table,  two  glass  jars  containing  mi- 
nute fish  of  the  new  variety,  and  a  bowl  with 
goldfish.  There  were  many  other  things,  for- 
gotten by  me. 

Lucy,  her  pigtails  neatly  arranged,  sat  near 
the  window  and  pretended  to  be  reading  that 
fascinating  story,  "The  Pillars  of  the  House." 
I  say  pretending,  because  Lucy  did  not  care 
about  reading  at  any  time,  and  especially  dis- 
liked the  works  of  Charlotte  Mary  Yonge,  but 
she  thought  that  it  looked  well  that  she  and 
nurse  should  be  engaged  upon  literature  whilst 
the  rest  of  the  world  rioted  and  gambolled  their 
time  away.  There  was  no  one  who  at  the  mo- 
ment could  watch  and  admire  her  fine  spirit, 
but  you  never  knew  who  might  come  in. 

The  rioting  and  gambolling  consisted  in  the 
attempts  of  Robert,  Dorothy,  and  Eoger,  to 
give  a  realistic  presentation  to  an  audience  of 
one,  namely,  the  infant  Timothy,  of  the  life  of 
the  Bed  Indians  and  their  Squaws.  Under- 
neath the  nursery  table,  with  a  tablecloth,  some 
chairs  and  a  concertina,  they  were  presenting 
an  admirable  and  entirely  engrossing  perform- 
ance. 


132       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

Bim,  under  the  window  and  quite  close  to 
Lucy,  was  giving  a  party.  He  had  possessed 
himself  of  some  of  Dorothy's  dolls'  tea  things, 
he  had  begged  a  sponge  cake  from  nurse,  and 
could  be  heard  breaking  from  time  to  time 
into  such  sentences  as,  "Do  have  a  little  more 
tweacle  pudding,  Mrs.  Smith.  It's  the  best 
tweacle,"  and,  "It's  a  nice  day,  isn't  it!"  but 
he  was  sorely  interrupted  by  the  noisy  festivi- 
ties of  the  Indians  who  broke,  frequently,  into 
realistic  cries  of  "Oh!  Roger,  you're  pull- 
ing my  hair,"  or  "I  won't  play  if  you  don't 
look  out!" 

It  may  be  that  these  interruptions  disturbed 
the  actuality  of  Bim's  festivities,  or  it  may  be 
that  the  rattling  of  the  rain  upon  the  window 
panes  diverted  his  attention.  Once  he  broke 
into  a  chuckle.  "Isn't  they  banging  on  the 
window,  Lucy?"  he  said,  but  she  was,  it  ap- 
peared, too  deeply  engaged  to  answer  him.  He 
found  that,  in  a  moment  of  abstraction,  he  had 
eaten  the  whole  of  the  sponge  cake,  so  that  it 
was  obvious  that  the  party  was  over.  * '  Good- 
bye, Mrs.  Smith.  It  was  really  nice  of  you  to 
come.  Good-bye,  dear,  Mrs.—  -  I  think  the 
wain  almost  isn't  coming  now." 

He  said  farewell  to  them  all  and  climbed  up- 


BIM  BOCHESTER  133 

on  the  window  seat.  Here,  gazing  down  into 
the  Square,  he  saw  that  the  rain  was  stopping, 
and,  on  the  farther  side,  above  the  roofs  of  the 
houses,  a  little  splash  of  gold  had  crept  into  the 
grey.  He  watched  the  gold,  heard  the  rain  com- 
ing more  slowly ;  at  first,  * '  spatter-spatter-spat- 
ter, ' '  then, ' l  spatter — spatter. ' '  Then  one  drop 
very  slowly  after  another  drop.  Then  he  saw 
that  the  sun  from  somewhere  far  away  had 
found  out  the  wet  paths  in  the  garden,  and  was 
now  stealing,  very  secretly,  along  them.  Soon 
it  would  strike  the  seat,  and  then  the  statue  of 
the  funny  fat  man  in  all  his  clothes,  and  then, 
perhaps,  the  fountain.  He  was  unhappy  a  lit- 
tle, and  he  did  not  know  why :  he  was  conscious, 
perhaps,  of  the  untidy,  noisy  room  behind  him, 
of  his  sister  Dorothy  who,  now  a  Squaw  of  a 
quite  genuine  and  realistic  kind,  was  crying  at 
the  top  of  her  voice:  "I  don't  care.  I  will 
have  it  if  I  want  to.  You're  not  to,  Roger," 
and  of  Timothy,  his  baby  brother,  who,  moved 
by  his  sister 's  cries,  howled  monotonously,  per- 
sistently, hopelessly. 

1  i  Oh,  give  over,  do,  Miss  Dorothy ! ' '  said  the 
nurse,  raising  her  eye  for  a  moment  from  her 
book.  "Why  can't  you  be  quiet?" 

Outside  the  world  was  beginning  to  shine 


134       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

and  glitter,  inside  it  was  all  horrid  and  noisy. 
He  sighed  a  little,  he  wanted  to  express  in  some 
way  his  feelings.  He  looked  at  Lucy  and  drew 
closer  to  her.  She  had  beside  her  a  painted 
china  mug  which  one  of  her  uncles  had  brought 
her  from  Russia;  she  had  stolen  some  daffodils 
from  her  mother's  room  downstairs  and  now 
was  arranging  them.  This  painted  mug  was 
one  of  her  most  valued  possessions,  and  Bim 
himself  thought  it,  with  its  strange  red  and 
brown  figures  running  round  it,  the  finest  thing 
in  all  the  world. 

' '  Lucy, ' '  he  said.  *  *  Do  you  s  'pose  if  you  was 
going  to  jump  all  the  way  down  to  the  street 
and  wasn't  afraid  that  p'r'aps  your  legs 
wouldn't  get  broken!" 

He  was  not,  in  reality,  greatly  interested  in 
the  answer  to  his  question,  but  the  important 
thing  always  with  Lucy  was  first  to  enchain  her 
attention.  He  had  learnt,  long  ago,  that  to 
tell  her  that  he  loved  her,  to  invite  tenderness 
from  her  in  return,  was  to  ask  for  certain  re- 
buff— he  always  began  his  advances  then  in  this 
roundabout  manner. 

"What  do  you  think,  Lucy?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  How  can  I  tell?  Don't 
bother." 


BIM  EOCHESTEE  135 

It  was  then  that  Bun  felt  what  was,  for  him, 
a  very  rare  sensation.  He  was  irritated. 

"I  don't  bower,"  he  said,  with  a  cross  look 
in  the  direction  of  his  brother  and  sister  Eoch- 
esters.  "No,  but,  Lucy,  s'pose  some  one — 
nurse,  s'pose — did  fall  down  into  the  street 
and  broke  all  her  legs  and  arms,  she  wouldn't 
be  dead,  would  she?" 

"You  silly  little  boy,  of  course  not." 

He  looked  at  Lucy,  saw  the  frown  upon  her 
forehead,  and  felt  suddenly  that  all  his  devo- 
tion to  her  was  wasted,  that  she  didn't  want 
him,  that  nobody  wanted  him — now  when  the 
sun  was  making  the  garden  glitter  like  a  jewel 
and  the  fountain  to  shine  like  a  sword. 

He  felt  in  his  throat  a  hard,  choking  lump. 
He  came  closer  to  his  sister. 

"You  might  pay  'tention,  Lucy,"  he  said 
plaintively. 

Lucy  broke  a  daffodil  stalk  viciously.  "Go, 
and  talk  to  the  others,"  she  said.  "I  haven't 
time  for  you." 

The  tears  were  hot  in  his  eyes  and  anger  was 
in  his  heart — anger  bred  of  the  rain,  of  the 
noise,  of  the  confusion. 

"You  are  howwid,"  he  said  slowly. 

"Well,  go  away,  then,  if  I'm  horrid,"  she 


136       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

pushed  with  her  hand  at  his  knee.  "I  didn't 
ask  you  to  come  here. ' ' 

Her  touch  infuriated  him;  he  kicked  and 
caught  a  very  tender  part  of  her  calf. 

"Oh!  You  little  beast!"  She  came  to  him, 
leant  for  a  moment  across  him,  then  slapped 
his  cheek. 

The  pain,  the  indignity,  and,  above  all,  a 
strange  confused  love  for  his  sister  that  was 
near  to  passionate  rage,  let  loose  all  the  devils 
that  owned  Bim  for  their  habitation. 

He  did  three  things:  He  screamed  aloud, 
he  bent  forward  and  bit  Lucy's  hand  hard,  he 
seized  Lucy's  wonderful  Russian  mug  and 
dashed  it  to  the  ground.  He  then  stood  staring 
at  the  shattered  fragments. 

m 

THERE  followed,  of  course,  confusion.  Nurse 
started  up.  "The  Shadow  of  Ashlydyat"  de- 
scended into  the  ashes,  the  children  rushed 
eagerly  from  beneath  the  table  to  the  centre  of 
hostilities. 

But  there  were  no  hostilities.  Lucy  and  Bim 
were,  both  of  them,  utterly  astonished,  Lucy, 
as  she  looked  at  the  scattered  mug,  was,  indeed, 


BIM  EOCHESTEB  137 

sobbing,  but  absent-mindedly — her  thoughts 
were  elsewhere.  Her  thoughts,  in  fact,  were 
with  Bim.  She  realised  suddenly  that  never  be- 
fore had  he  lost  his  temper  with  her;  she  was 
aware  that  his  affection  had  been  all  this  time 
of  value  to  her,  of  much  more  value,  indeed, 
than  the  stupid  old  mug.  She  bent  down — still 
absent-mindedly  sobbing — and  began  to  pick  up 
the  pieces.  She  was  really  astonished — being 
a  dry  and  rather  hard  little  girl — at  her  affec- 
tion for  Bim. 

The  nurse  seized  on  the  unresisting  villain 
of  the  piece  and  shook  him.  "You  naughty 
little  boy!  To  go  and  break  your  sister's  beau- 
tiful mug.  It's  your  horrid  temper  that'll  be 
the  ruin  of  you,  mark  my  words,  as  I'm  always 
telling  you."  (Bim  had  never  been  known  to 
lose  his  temper  before.)  "Yes,  it  will.  You 
see,  you  naughty  boy.  And  all  the  other  chil- 
dren as  good  as  gold  and  quiet  as  lambs,  and 
you've  got  to  go  and  do  this.  You  shall  stand 
in  the  corner  all  tea-time,  and  not  a  bite  shall 
you  have."  Here  Bim  began,  in  a  breathless, 
frightened  way,  to  sob.  "Yes,  well  you  may. 
Never  mind,  Miss  Lucy,  I  dare  say  your  uncle 
will  bring  you  another."  Here  she  became 
conscious  of  an  attentive  and  deeply  interested 


138       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

audience.  "Now,  children,  time  to  get  ready 
for  tea.  Run  along,  Miss  Dorothy,  now.  What 
a  nuisance  you  all  are,  to  be  sure. ' ' 

They  were  removed  from  the  scene.  Bim 
was  placed  in  the  corner  with  his  face  to  the 
wall.  He  was  aghast ;  no  words  can  give,  at  all, 
any  idea  of  how  dumbly  aghast  he  was.  What 
possessed  him?  What,  in  an  instant  of  time, 
had  leapt  down  from  the  clouds,  had  sprung 
up  from  the  Square  and  seized  him?  Between 
his  amazed  thoughts  came  little  surprised  sobs. 
But  he  had  not  abandoned  himself  to  grief — 
he  was  too  sternly  set  upon  the  problem  of 
reparation.  Something  must  be  done,  and  that 
quickly. 

The  great  thought  in  his  mind  was  that  he 
must  replace  the  mug.  He  had  not  been  very 
often  in  the  streets  beyond  the  Square,  but 
upon  certain  occasions  he  had  seen  their  glo- 
ries, and  he  knew  that  there  had  been  shops 
and  shops  and  shops.  Quite  close  to  him,  upon 
a  shelf,  was  his  money-box,  a  squat,  ugly  af- 
fair of  red  tin,  into  whose  large  mouth  he  had 
been  compelled  to  force  those  gifts  that  kind 
relations  had  bestowed.  There  must  be  now 
quite  a  fortune  there — enough  to  buy  many 
mugs.  He  could  not  himself  open  it,  but  he 


BIM  EOCHESTER  139 

did  not  doubt  that  the  man  in  the  shop  would 
do  that  for  him. 

Not  for  many  more  moments  would  he  be 
left  alone.  His  hat  was  lying  on  the  table; 
he  seized  that  and  his  money-box,  and  was  out 
on  the  landing. 

The  rest  is  his  story.  I  cannot,  as  I  have  al- 
ready said,  vouch  for  the  truth  of  it.  At  first, 
fortune  was  on  his  side.  There  seemed  to  be 
no  one  about  the  house.  He  went  down  the 
wide  staircase  without  making  any  sound;  in 
the  hall  he  stopped  for  a  moment  because  he 
heard  voices,  but  no  one  came.  Then  with 
both  hands,  and  standing  on  tiptoe,  he  turned 
the  lock  of  the  door,  and  was  outside. 

The  Square  was  bathed  in  golden  sun,  a  sun, 
the  stronger  for  his  concealment,  but  tempered, 
too,  with  the  fine  gleam  that  the  rain  had  left. 
Never  before  had  Bim  been  outside  that  door 
alone ;  he  was  aware  that  this  was  a  very  tre- 
mendous adventure.  The  sky  was  a  washed 
and  delicate  purple,  and  behold!  on  the  high 
railings,  a  row  of  sparrows  were  chattering. 
Voices  were  cold  and  clear,  echoing,  as  it 
seemed,  against  the  straight,  grey  walls  of  the 
houses,  and  all  the  trees  in  the  garden  glist- 
ened with  their  wet  leaves  shining  with  gold; 


140       THE  GOLDEN  SCAKECKOW 

there  seemed  to  be,  too,  a  dim  veil  of  smoke 
that  was  homely  and  comfortable. 

It  is  not  nsual  to  see  a  small  boy  of  four 
alone  in  a  London  sqnare,  bnt  Bim  met,  at  first, 
no  one  except  a  messenger  boy,  who  stopped 
and  looked  after  him.  At  the  corner  of  the 
Square — just  out  of  the  Square  so  that  it  might 
not  shame  its  grandeur — was  a  fruit  and  flower 
shop,  and  this  shop  was  the  entrance  to  a  street 
that  had  much  life  and  bustle  about  it.  Here 
Bim  paused  with  his  money-box  clasped  very 
tightly  to  him.  Then  he  made  a  step  or  two 
and  was  instantly  engulfed,  it  seemed,  in  a  per- 
fect whirl  of  men  and  women,  of  carts  and  bi- 
cycles, of  voices  and  cries  and  screams;  there 
were  lights  of  every  colour,  and  especially  one 
far  above  his  head  that  came  and  disappeared 
and  came  again  with  terrifying  wizardry. 

He  was,  quite  suddenly,  and  as  it  were,  by 
the  agency  of  some  outside  person,  desperately 
frightened.  It  was  a  new  terror,  different  from 
anything  that  he  had  known  before.  It  was  as 
though  a  huge  giant  had  suddenly  lifted  him 
up  by  the  seat  of  his  breeches,  or  a  witch  had 
transplanted  him  on  to  her  broomstick  and  car- 
ried him  off.  It  was  as  unusual  as  that. 

His  under  lip  began  to  quiver,  and  he  knew 


BIM  EOCHESTEE  141 

i 

that  presently  he  would  be  crying.    Then,  as  he 
always  did,  when  something  unusual  occurred 
to  him,  he  thought  of  "Mr.  Jack.'*     At  this 
point,  when  you  ask  him  what  happened,  he  al- 
ways says :    1 1  Oh !    He  came,  you  know — came 
walking  along — like  he  always  did." 
"Was  he  just  like  other  people,  Bim?" 
"Yes,  just.    "With  a  beard,  you  know — just 
like  he  always  was." 

"Yes,  but  what  sort  of  things  did  he  wear?" 
"Oh,  just  ord'nary  things,  like  you." 
There  was  no  sense  of  excitement  or  won- 
der to  be  got  out  of  him.  It  was  true  that  Mr. 
Jack  nadn't  shown  himself  for  quite  a  long 
time,  but  that,  Bim  felt,  was  natural  enough. 
"He'll  come  less  and  seldomer  and  seldomer  as 
you  get  big,  you  know.  It  was  just  at  first, 
when  one  was  very  little  and  didn't  know  one's 
way  about — just  to  help  babies  not  to  be  fright- 
ened. Timothy  would  tell  you  only  he  won't. 
Then  he  comes  only  a  little — just  at  special 
times  like  this  was." 

Bim  told  you  this  with  a  slightly  bored  air, 
as  though  it  were  silly  of  you  not  to  know,  and 
really  his  air  of  certainty  made  an  incredulous 
challenge  a  difficult  thing.  On  the  present  oc- 
casion Mr.  Jack  was  just  there,  in  the  middle 


142       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

of  the  crowd,  smiling  and  friendly.  He  took 
Bim's  hand,  and,  "Of  course,"  Bim  said, 
"there  didn't  have  to  be  any  'splaining.  He 
knew  what  I  wanted."  True  or  not,  I  like  to 
think  of  them,  in  the  evening  air,  serenely  safe 
and  comfortable,  and  in  any  case,  it  was  surely 
strange  that  if,  as  one's  common  sense  com- 
pels one  to  suppose,  Bim  were  all  alone  in  that 
crowd,  no  one  wondered  or  stopped  him  nor 
asked  him  where  his  home  was.  At  any  rate,  I 
have  no  opinions  on  the  subject  Bim  says 
that,  at  once,  they  found  themselves  out  of  the 
crowd  in  a  quiet,  little  "dinky"  street,  as  he 
called  it,  a  street  that,  in  his  description  of  it, 
answered  to  nothing  that  I  can  remember  in 
this  part  of  the  world.  His  account  of  it  seems 
to  present  a  dark,  rather  narrow  place,  with 
overhanging  roofs  and  swinging  signs,  and  no- 
body, he  says,  at  all  about,  but  a  church  with  a 
bell,  and  outside  one  shop  a  row  of  bright-col- 
oured clothes  hanging.  At  any  rate,  here  Bim 
found  the  place  that  he  wanted.  There  was  a 
little  shop  with  steps  down  into  it  and  a  tink- 
ling bell  which  made  a  tremendous  noise  when 
you  pushed  the  old  oak  door.  Inside  there  was 
every  sort  of  thing.  Bim  lost  himself  here  in 
the  ecstasy  of  his  description,  lacking  also 


BIM  EOCHESTEE  143 

names  for  many  of  the  things  that  he  saw.  But 
there  was  a  whole  suit  of  shining  armour,  and 
there  were  jewels,  and  old  brass  trays,  and  car- 
pets, and  a  crocodile,  which  Bim  called  a  "cro- 
docile."  There  was  also  a  friendly  old  man 
with  a  white  beard,  and  over  everything  a  love- 
ly smell,  which  Bim  said  was  like  "  roast  po- 
tatoes" and  "the  stuff  mother  has  in  a  bottle 
in  her  bedwoom." 

Bim  could,  of  course,  have  stayed  there  for 
ever,  but  Mr.  Jack  reminded  him  of  a  possibly 
anxious  family.  "There,  is  that  what  you're1 
after?"  he  said,  and,  sure  enough,  there  on  a 
shelf,  smiling  and  eager  to  be  bought,  was  a 
mug  exactly  like  the  one  that  Bim  had  broken. 

There  was  then  the  business  of  paying  for 
it,  the  money-box  was  produced  and  opened  by 
the  old  man  with  "a  shining  knife,"  and  Bim 
was  gravely  informed  that  the  money  found  in 
the  box  was  exactly  the  right  amount.  Bim 
had  been,  for  a  moment,  in  an  agony  of  agita- 
tion lest  he  should  have  too  little,  but  as  he  told 
us,  "There  was  all  Uncle  Alfred's  Christmas 
money,  and  what  mother  gave  me  for  the  tooth, 
and  that  silly  lady  with  the  green  dress  who 
would  kiss  me. ' '  So,  you  see,  there  must  have 
been  an  awful  amount. 


144       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

Then  they  went,  Bim  clasping  his  money- 
box in  one  hand  and  the  mug  in  the  other.  The 
mug  was  wrapped  in  beautiful  blue  paper  that 
smelt,  as  we  were  all  afterwards  to  testify,  of 
dates  and  spices.  The  crocodile  flapped 
against  the  wall,  the  bell  tinkled,  and  the  shop 
was  left  behind  them.  "Most  at  once,"  Bim 
said  they  were  by  the  fruit  shop  again;  he 
knew  that  Mr.  Jack  was  going,  and  he  had  a 
sudden  most  urgent  longing  to  go  with  him, 
to  stay  with  him,  to  be  with  him  always.  He 
wanted  to  cry ;  he  felt  dreadfully  unhappy,  but 
all  of  his  thanks,  his  strange  desires,  that  he 
could  bring  out  was,  in  a  quavering  voice,  try- 
ing hard,  you  understand,  not  to  cry,  "Mr. 
Jack.  Oh !  Mr. ' '  and  his  friend  was  gone. 

IV 

HE  trotted  home ;  with  every  step  his  pride  in- 
creased. What  would  Lucy  say?  And  dim, 
unrealised,  but  forming,  nevertheless,  the  basis 
for  the  whole  of  his  triumph,  was  his  conscious- 
ness that  she  who  had  scoffed,  derided,  at  his 
"Mr.  Jack,"  should  now  so  absolutely  benefit 
by  him.  This  was  bringing  together,  at  last, 
the  two  of  them. 


BIM  EOCHESTEB  145 

His  nurse,  in  a  fine  frenzy  of  agitation,  met 
him.  Her  relief  at  his  safety  swallowed  her 
anger.  She  conld  only  gasp  at  him.  "Well, 

Master  Bim,  and  a  nice  state Oh,  dear !  to 

think;  wherever " 

On  the  doorstep  he  forced  his  nurse  to  pause, 
and,  turning,  looked  at  the  gardens  now  in 
shadow  of  spun  gold,  with  the  fountain  blue  as 
the  sky.  He  nodded  his  head  with  satisfaction. 
It  had  been  a  splendid  time.  It  would  be  a  very 
long  while,  he  knew,  before  he  was  allowed  out 
again  like  that.  Yes.  He  clasped  the  mug 
tightly,  and  the  door  closed  behind  him. 

I  don't  know  that  there  is  anything  more  to 
say.  There  were  the  empty  money-box  and 
the  mug.  There  was  Bim's  unhesitating  and 
unchangeable  story.  There  is  a  shop,  just  be- 
hind the  Square,  where  they  have  some  Eussian 
crockery.  But  Bim  alone? 

I  don't  know. 


NANCY   BOSS 


MB.  MUNTY  ROSS'S  house  was  certainly 
the  smartest  in  March  Square ;  No.  14, 
where  the  Duchess  of  Crole  lived,  was  shabby 
in  comparison.  Very  often  you  may  see  a  line 
of  motor-cars  and  carriages  stretching  down 
the  Square,  then  round  the  corner  into  Lent 
Street,  and  you  may  know  then — as,  indeed, 
all  the  Square  did  know  and  most  carefully  ob- 
served— that  Mrs.  Munty  Eoss  was  giving  an- 
other of  her  smart  little  parties.  That  dark- 
green  door,  that  neat  overhanging  balcony, 
those  rows — in  the  summer  months — of  scarlet 
geraniums,  that  roll  of  carpet  that  ran,  many 
times  a  week,  from  the  door  over  the  pavement 
to  the  very  foot  of  the  waiting  vehicle — these 
things  were  Mrs.  Munty  Ross's. 

Munty  Ross — a  silent,  ugly,  black  little  man 

146 


NANCY  BOSS  147 

— had  made  his  money  in  potted  shrimps,  or 
something  equally  compact  and  indigestible, 
and  it  really  was  very  nice  to  think  that  any- 
thing in  time  could  blossom  out  into  beauty  as 
striking  as  Mrs.  Munty's  lovely  dresses,  or 
melody  as  wonderful  as  the  voice  of  M.  Badizi- 
will,  the  famous  tenor,  whom  she  often  * '  turned 
on"  at  her  little  evening  parties.  Upon  Mr. 
Munty  alone  the  shrimps  seemed  to  have  made 
no  effect.  He  was  as  black,  as  insignificant,  as 
ugly  as  ever  he  had  been  in  the  days  before  he 
knew  of  a  shrimp's  possibilities.  He  was  very 
silent  at  his  wife's  parties,  and  sometimes 
dropped  his  h's.  "What  Mrs.  Munty  had  been 
before  her  marriage  no  one  quite  knew,  but 
now  she  was  flaxen  and  slim  and  beautifully 
clothed,  with  a  voice  like  an  insincere  canary; 
she  had  "a  passion  for  the  Opera,"  a  ''passion 
for  motoring,"  "a  passion  for  the  latest  re- 
ligion," and  "a  passion  for  the  simple  life." 
All  these  things  did  the  shrimps  enable  her  to 
gratify,  and  "the  simple  life"  cost  her  more 
than  all  the  others  put  together. 

Heaven  had  blessed  them  with  one  child,  and 
that  child  was  called  Nancy.  Nancy,  her  moth- 
er always  said  with  pride,  was  old  for  her  age, 
and,  as  her  age  was  only  just  five,  that  remark 


148       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

was  quite  true.  Nancy  Ross  was  old  for  any 
age.  Had  she  herself,  one  is  compelled  when 
considering  her  to  wonder,  any  conception  dur- 
ing those  first  months  of  the  things  that  were 
going  to  be  made  out  of  her,  and  had  she,  per- 
haps at  the  very  commencement  of  it  all,  some 
instinct  of  protest  and  rebellion?  Poor  Nancy  1 
The  tragedy  of  her  whole  case  was  now  none 
other  than  that  she  hadn't,  here  at  five  years 
old  in  March  Square,  the  slightest  picture  of 
what  she  had  become,  nor  could  she,  I  suppose, 
have  imagined  it  possible  for  her  to  become 
anything  different.  Nancy,  in  her  own  real  and 
naked  person,  was  a  small  child  with  a  good 
flow  of  flaxen  hair  and  light-blue  eyes.  All  her 
features  were  small  and  delicate,  and  she  gave 
you  the  impression  that  if  you  only  pulled  a 
string  or  pushed  a  button  somewhere  in  the 
middle  of  her  back  you  could  evoke  any  cry, 
smile  or  exclamation  that  you  cared  to  arouse. 
Her  eyes  were  old  and  weary,  her  attitude  al- 
ways that  of  one  who  had  learnt  the  ways  of 
this  world,  had  found  them  sawdust,  but  had 
nevertheless  consented  still  to  play  the  game. 
Just  as  the  house  was  filled  with  little  gilt 
chairs  and  china  cockatoos,  so  was  Nancy  ar- 
rayed in  ribbons  and  bows  and  lace.  Mrs. 


NANCY  EOSS  149 

Munty  had,  one  must  suppose,  surveyed  during 
certain  periods  in  her  life  certain  real  emotions 
rather  as  the  gaping  villagers  survey  the  tiger 
behind  his  bars  in  the  travelling  circus. 

The  time  had  then  come  when  she  put  these 
emotions  away  from  her  as  childish  things, 
and  determined  never  to  be  faced  with  any  of 
them  again.  It  was  not  likely,  then,  that  she 
would  introduce  Nancy  to  any  of  them.  She 
introduced  Nancy  to  clothes  and  deportment, 
and  left  it  at  that.  She  wanted  her  child  to 
"look  nice."  She  was  able,  now  that  Nancy 
was  five  years  old,  to  say  that  she  "  looked  very 
nice  indeed. ' ' 


ii 

FROM  the  very  beginning  nurses  were  chosen 
who  would  take  care  of  Nancy  Boss's  appear- 
ance. There  was  plenty  of  money  to  spend, 
and  Nancy  was  a  child  who,  with  her  flaxen 
hair  and  blue  eyes,  would  repay  trouble.  She 
did  repay  it,  because  she  had  no  desires  to- 
wards grubbiness  or  rebellion,  or  any  wild- 
nesses  whatever.  She  just  sat  there  with  her 
doll  balanced  neatly  in  her  arms,  and  allowed 
herself  to  be  pulled  and  twisted  and  squeezed 


150       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

and  stretched.  " There's  a  pretty  little  lady," 
said  nurse,  and  a  pretty  little  lady  Nancy  was 
sure  that  she  was.  The  order  for  her  day  was 
that  in  the  morning  she  went  out  for  a  walk 
in  the  gardens  in  the  Square,  and  in  the  after- 
noon she  went  out  for  another.  During  these 
walks  she  moved  slowly,  her  doll  delicately  car- 
ried, her  beautiful  clothes  shining  with  ap- 
proval of  the  way  that  they  were  worn,  her 
head  high, ' '  like  a  little  queen, ' '  said  her  nurse. 
She  was  conscious  of  the  other  children  in  the 
gardens,  who  often  stopped  in  the  middle  of 
their  play  and  watched  her.  She  thought  them 
hot  and  dirty  and  very  noisy.  She  was  sorry 
for  their  mothers. 

It  happened  sometimes  that  she  came  down- 
stairs, towards  the  end  of  a  luncheon  party, 
and  was  introduced  to  the  guests.  ' '  You  pretty 
little  thing,"  women  in  very  large  hats  said  to 
her.  "Lovely  hair,"  or  "She's  the  very  image 
of  you,  Clarice,"  to  her  mother.  She  liked  to 
hear  that  because  she  greatly  admired  her 
mother.  She  knew  that  she,  Nancy  Ross,  was 
beautiful ;  she  knew  that  clothes  were  of  an  im- 
mense importance;  she  knew  that  other  chil- 
dren were  unpleasant.  For  the  rest,  she  was 
neither  extravagantly  glad  nor  extravagantly 


NANCY  BOSS  151 

sorry.  She  preserved  a  fine  indifference.  .  .  . 
And  yet,  although  here  my  story  may  seem  to 
matter-of-fact  persons  to  take  a  turn  towards 
the  fantastic,  this  was  not  quite  all.  Nancy 
herself,  dimly  and  yet  uneasily,  was  aware  that 
there  was  something  else. 

She  was  not  a  little  girl  who  believed  in 
fairies  or  witches  or  the  "bogey  man,"  or  any- 
thing indeed  that  she  could  not  see.  She  in- 
herited from  her  mother  a  splendid  confidence 
in  the  reality,  the  solid,  unquestioned  reality 
of  all  concrete  and  tangible  things.  She  had 
been  presented  once  with  a  fine  edition  of 
"Grimm's  Fairy  Tales,"  an  edition  with  col- 
oured pictures  and  every  allure.  She  had 
turned  its  pages  with  a  look  of  incredulous 
amazement.  "What,"  she  seemed  to  say — she 
was  then  aged  three  and  a  half — ' '  are  these  ab- 
surd things  that  you  are  telling  me?  People 
aren't  like  that.  Mother  isn't  in  the  least  like 
that.  I  don't  understand  this,  and  it's  te- 
dious ! ' ' 

"I'm  afraid  the  child  has  no  imagination," 
said  her  nurse. 

"What  a  lucky  thing!"  said  her  mother. 

Nor  could  Mrs.  Boss's  house  be  said  to  be  a 
place  that  encouraged  fairies.  They  would 


152       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

have  found  the  gilt  chairs  hard  to  sit  upon,  and 
there  were  no  mysterious  corners.  There  was 
nothing  mysterious  at  all.  And  yet  Nancy 
Ross,  sitting  in  her  magnificent  clothes,  was 
conscious  as  she  advanced  towards  her  sixth 
year  that  she  was  not  perfectly  comfortable. 
To  say  that  she  felt  lonely  would  be,  perhaps, 
to  emphasise  too  strongly  her  discomfort.  It 
was  perhaps  rather  that  she  felt  inquisitive — 
only  a  little,  a  very  little — but  she  did  begin 
to  wish  that  she  could  ask  a  few  ques- 
tions. 

There  came  a  day — an  astonishing  day — 
when  she  felt  irritated  with  her  mother.  She 
had  during  her  walk  through  the  garden  seen 
a  little  boy  and  a  little  girl,  who  were  grubbing 
about  in  a  little  pile  of  earth  and  sand  there 
in  the  corner  under  the  trees,  and  grubbing 
very  happily.  They  had  dirt  upon  their  faces, 
but  their  nurse  was  sitting,  apparently  quite 
easy  in  her  mind,  and  the  sun  had  not  stppped 
in  its  course  nor  had  the  birds  upon  the  trees 
ceased  to  sing.  Nancy  stayed  for  a  moment  her 
progress  and  looked  at  them,  and  something 
not  very  far  from  envy  struck,  in  some  far- 
distant  hiding-place,  her  soul.  She  moved  on, 
but  when  she  came  indoors  and  was  met  by 


NANCY  BOSS  153 

her  mamma  and  a  handsome  lady,  her  mam- 
ma's friend,  who  said:  "Isn't  she  a  pretty 
dear?"  and  her  mother  said:  "That's  right, 
Nancy  darling,  been  for  your  walk?'/  she  was, 
for  an  amazing  moment,  irritated  with  her 
beautiful  mother. 


in 

ONCE  she  was  conscious  of  this  desire  to  ask 
questions  she  had  no  more  peace.  Although 
she  was  only  five  years  of  age,  she  had  all  the 
determination  not  "to  give  herself  away"  of 
a  woman  of  forty.  She  was  not  going  to  show 
that  she  wanted  anything  in  the  world,  and  yet 

she  would  have  liked .    A  little  wistfully  she 

looked  at  her  nurse.  But  that  good  woman, 
carefully  chosen  by  Mrs.  Eoss,  was  not  the  one 
to  encourage  questions.  She  was  as  shining  as 
a  new  brass  nail,  and  a  great  deal  harder. 

The  nursery  was  as  neat  as  a  pin,  with  a 
lovely  bright  rocking-horse  upon  which  Nancy 
had  never  ridden;  a  pink  doll's-house  with 
every  modern  contrivance,  whose  doors  had 
never  been  opened ;  a  number  of  expensive  dolls, 
which  had  never  been  disrobed.  Nancy  ap- 
proached these  joys — diffidently  and  with  cau- 


154       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

tion.  She  rode  upon  the  horse,  opened  the 
doll's-house,  embraced  the  dolls,  but  she  had 
no  natural  imagination  to  bestow  upon  them, 
and  the  horse  and  the  dolls,  hurt,  perhaps,  at 
their  long  neglect,  received  her  with  frigidity. 
Those  grubby  little  children  in  the  Square 
would,  she  knew,  have  been  " there"  in  a  mo- 
ment. She  began  then  to  be  frightened.  The 
nursery,  her  bedroom,  the  dark  little  passage 
outside,  were  suddenly  alarming.  Sometimes, 
when  she  was  sitting  quietly  in  her  nursery, 
the  house  was  so  silent  that  she  could  have 
screamed. 

"I  don't  think  Miss  Nancy's  quite  well, 
ma'am,"  said  the  nurse. 

"Oh,  dear!  What  a  nuisance,"  said  Mrs. 
Ross,  who  liked  her  little  girl  to  be  always  well 
and  beautiful.  "I  do  hope  she's  not  going  to 
catch  something." 

"She  doesn't  take  that  pleasure  in  her  clothes 
she  did,"  said  the  nurse. 

"Perhaps  she  wants  some  new  ones,"  said 
her  mother.  "Take  her  to  Florice,  nurse." 
Nancy  went  to  Florice,  and  beautiful  new  gar- 
ments were  invented,  and  once  again  she  was 
squeezed,  and  tightened,  and  stretched,  and 
pulled.  But  Nancy  was  indifferent.  As  they 


NANCY  BOSS  155 

tried  these  clothes,  and  stood  back,  and  stepped 
forward,  and  admired  and  criticised,  she  was 
thinking,  "I  wish  the  nursery  clock  didn't 
make  such  a  noise." 

Her  little  bedroom  next  to  nurse's  large  one 
was  a  beautiful  affair,  with  red  roses  up  and 
down  the  wall-paper  and  in  and  out  of  the 
crockery  and  round  and  round  the  carpet.  Her 
bed  was  magnificent,  with  lace  and  more  roses, 
and  there  was  a  fine  photograph  of  her  beauti- 
ful mother  in  a  silver  frame  on  the  mantelpiece. 
But  all  these  things  were  of  little  avail  when 
the  dark  came.  She  began  to  be  frightened  of 
the  dark. 

There  came  a  night  when,  waking  with  a  sud- 
denness that  did  of  itself  contribute  to  her 
alarm,  she  was  conscious  that  the  room  was 
intensely  dark,  and  that  every  one  was  very 
far  away.  The  house,  as  she  listened,  seemed 
to  be  holding  its  breath,  the  clock  in  the  nursery 
was  ticking  in  a  frightened,  startled  terror,  and 
hesitating,  whimsical  noises  broke,  now  close, 
now  distant,  upon  the  silence.  She  lay  there, 
her  heart  beating  as  it  had  surely  never  been 
allowed  to  beat  before.  She  was  simply  a  very 
small,  very  frightened  little  girl.  Then,  before 
she  could  cry  out,  she  was  aware  that  some  one 


156        THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

was  standing  beside  her  bed.  She  was  aware 
of  this  before  she  looked,  and  then,  strangely 
(even  now  she  had  taken  no  peep),  she  was 
frightened  no  longer. 

The  room,  the  house,  were  suddenly  comfort- 
able and  safe  places;  as  water  slips  from  a 
pool  and  leaves  it  dry,  so  had  terror  glided 
from  her  side.  She  looked  up  then,  and,  al- 
though the  place  had  been  so  dark  that  she 
had  been  unable  to  distinguish  the  furniture, 
she  could  figure  to  herself  quite  clearly  her 
visitor's  form.  She  not  only  figured  it,  but  also 
quite  easily  and  readily  recognised  it.  All  these 
years  she  had  forgotten  him,  but  now  at  the 
vision  of  his  large  comfortable  presence  she 
was  back  again  amongst  experiences  and  recog- 
nitions that  evoked  for  her  once  more  all  those 
odd  first  days  when,  with  how  much  discomfort 
and  puzzled  dismay,  she  had  been  dropped,  so 
suddenly,  into  this  distressing  world.  He  put 
his  arms  around  her  and  held  her;  he  bent 
down  and  kissed  her,  and  her  small  hand  went 
up  to  his  beard  in  exactly  the  way  that  it  used 
to  do.  She  nestled  up  against  him. 

"It's  a  very  long  time,  isn't  it,"  he  said, 
"since  I  paid  you  a  visit!" 

"Yes,  a  long,  long  time." 


NANCY  BOSS  157 

"That's  because  you  didn't  want  me.  You 
got  on  so  well  without  me. ' ' 

"I  didn't  forget  about  you,"  she  said. 
"But  I  asked  mummy  about  you  once,  and  she 
said  you  were  all  nonsense,  and  I  wasn't  to 
think  things  like  that. ' ' 

"Ah!  your  mother's  forgotten  altogether. 
She  knew  me  once,  but  she  hasn't  wanted  me 
for  a  very,  very  long  time.  She'll  see  me  again, 
though,  one  day. ' ' 

"I'm  so  glad  you've  come.  You  won't  go 
away  again  now,  will  youf " 

"I  never  go  away,"  he  said.  "I'm  always 
here.  I've  seen  everything  you've  been  doing, 
and  a  very  dull  time  you've  been  making  of 
it." 

He  talked  to  her  and  told  her  about  some 
of  the  things  the  other  children  in  the  Square 
were  doing.  She  was  interested  a  little,  but 
not  very  much;  she  still  thought  a  great  deal 
more  about  herself  than  about  anything  or 
anybody  else. 

"Do  they  all  love  you?"  she  said. 

"Oh,  no,  not  at  all.  Some  of  them  think 
I'm  horrid.  Some  of  them  forget  me  alto- 
gether, and  then  I  never  come  back,  until  just 
at  the  end.  Some  of  them  only  want  me  when 


158       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

they're  in  trouble.  Some,  very  soon,  think  it 
silly  to  believe  in  me  at  all,  and  the  older  they 
grow  the  less  they  believe,  generally.  And 
when  I  do  come  they  won't  see  me,  they  make 
up  their  minds  not  to.  But  I'm  always  there 
just  the  same ;  it  makes  no  difference  what  they 
do.  They  can't  help  themselves.  Only  it's 
better  for  them  just  to  remember  me  a  little, 
because  then  it's  much  safer  for  them.  You've 
been  feeling  rather  lonely  lately,  haven't  you?" 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "It's  stupid  now  all  by 
myself.  There's  nobody  to  ask  questions  of." 

"Well,  there's  somebody  else  in  your  house 
who's  lonely." 

"Is  there?"    She  couldn't  think  of  any  one. 

"Yes.    Your  father." 

"Oh!    Father—  She  was  uninterested. 

"Yes.  You  see,  if  he  isn't—  '  and  then, 
at  that,  he  was  gone,  she  was  alone  and  fast 
asleep. 

In  the  morning  when  she  awoke,  she  remem- 
bered it  all  quite  clearly,  but,  of  course,  it  had 
all  been  a  dream.  "Such  a  funny  dream,"  she 
told  her  nurse,  but  she  would  give  out  no  de- 
tails. 

"Some  food  she's  been  eating,"  said  her 
nurse. 


NANCY  BOSS  159 

Nevertheless,  when,  on  that  afternoon,  com- 
ing in  from  her  walk,  she  met  her  dark,  grubby 
little  father  in  the  hall,  she  did  stay  for  a  mo- 
ment on  the  bottom  step  of  the  stairs  to  con- 
sider him. 

" I've  been  for  a  walk,  daddy,"  she  said, 
and  then,  rather  frightened  at  her  boldness, 
tumbled  up  on  the  next  step.  He  went  for- 
ward to  catch  her. 

"Hold  up,"  he  said,  held  her  for  a  moment, 
and  then  hurried,  confused  and  rather  agi- 
tated, into  his  dark  sanctum.  These  were,  very 
nearly,  the  first  words  that  they  had  ever,  in 
the  course  of  their  lives  together,  interchanged. 
Munty  Boss  was  uneasy  with  grown-up  persons 
(unless  he  was  discussing  business  with  them), 
but  that  discomfort  was  nothing  to  the  uneasi- 
ness that  he  felt  with  children.  Little  girls 
(who  certainly  looked  at  him  as  though  he 
were  an  ogre)  frightened  him  quite  horribly; 
moreover,  Mrs.  Munty  had,  for  a  great  number 
of  years,  pursued  a  policy  with  regard  to  her 
husband  that  was  not  calculated  to  make  him 
bright  and  easy  in  any  society.  "Poor  old 
Munty,"  she  would  say  to  her  friends,  "it's 

not  all  his  fault "  It  was,  as  a  fact,  very 

largely  hers.  He  had  never  been  an  eloquent 


160       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECEOW 

man,  but  her  playful  derision  of  his  uncouth- 
ness  slew  any  little  seeds  of  polite  conversation 
that  might,  under  happier  conditions,  have 
grown  into  brilliant  blossom.  It  had  been  un- 
derstood from  the  very  beginning  that  Nancy 
was  not  of  her  father's  world.  He  would  have 
been  scarcely  aware  that  he  had  a  daughter 
had  he  not,  at  certain  periods,  paid  bills  for 
her  clothes. 

"What's  a  child  want  with  all  this?"  he  had 
ventured  once  to  say. 

"Hardly  your  business,  my  dear,"  his  wife 
had  told  him.  "The  child's  clothes  are  mar- 
vellously cheap  considering.  I  don't  know  how 
Flo  rice  does  it  for  the  money."  He  resented 
nothing — it  was  not  his  way — but  he  did  feel, 
deep  down  in  his  heart,  that  the  child  was 
over-dressed,  that  it  must  be  bad  for  any  little 
girl  to  be  praised  in  the  way  that  his  daughter 
was  praised,  that  "the  kid  will  grow  up  with 
the  most  tremendous  ideas." 

He  resented  it,  perhaps  a  little,  that  his 
young  daughter  had  so  easily  accustomed  her- 
self to  the  thought  that  she  had  no  father. 
"She  might  just  want  to  see  me  occasionally. 
But  I'd  only  frighten  her,  I  suppose,  if  she 
did." 


NANCY  EOSS  161 

Munty  Eoss  had  very  little  of  the  sentimen- 
talist about  him;,  he  was  completely  cynical 
about  the  value  of  the  human  heart,  and  be- 
lieved in  the  worth  and  goodness  of  no  one  at 
all.  He  had,  for  a  brief  wild  moment,  been  in 
love  with  his  wife,  but  she  had  taken  care  to 
kill  that,  "the  earlier  the  better."  "My  dear," 
she  would  say  to  a  chosen  friend,  "what  Mun- 
ty's  like  when  he's  romantic!"  She  never, 
after  the  first  month  of  their  married  life  to- 
gether, caught  a  glimpse  of  that  side  of  him. 

Now,  however,  he  did  permit  his  mind  to 
linger  over  that  vision  of  his  little  daughter 
tumbling  on  the  stairs.  He  wondered  what 
had  made  her  do  it.  He  was  astonished  at  the 
difference  that  it  made  to  him. 

To  Nancy  also  it  had  made  a  great  difference. 
She  wished  that  she  had  stayed  there  on  the 
stairs  a  little  longer  to  hold  a  more  important 
conversation.  She  had  thought  of  her  father 
as  "all  horrid" — now  his  very  contrast  to  her 
little  world  pleased  and  interested  her.  It  may 
also  be  that,  although  she  was  young,  she  had 
even  now  a  picture  in  her  mind  of  her  father's 
loneliness.  She  may  have  seen  into  her  moth- 
er's attitude  with  an  acuteness  much  older 
than  her  actual  years. 


162       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

She  thought  now  continually  about  her  fa- 
ther. She  made  little  plans  to  meet  him,  but 
these  meetings  were  not,  as  a  rule,  successful, 
because  so  often  he  was  down  in  the  city.  She 
would  wait  at  the  end  of  her  afternoon  walk 
on  the  stairs. 

4 '  Come  along,  Miss  Nancy,  do.  What  are  you 
hanging  about  there  fort" 

"Nothing." 

"You'll  be  disturbing  your  mother." 

"Just  a  minute." 

She  peered  anxiously,  her  little  head  almost 
held  by  the  railings  of  the  banisters ;  she  gazed 
down  into  black,  mysterious  depths  wherein 
her  father  might  be  hidden.  She  was  driven 
to  all  this  partly  by  some  real  affection  that 
had  hitherto  found  no  outlet,  partly  by  a  desire 
for  adventure,  but  partly,  also,  by  some  force 
that  was  behind  her  and  quite  recognised  by 
her.  It  was  as  though  she  said:  "If  I'm  nice 
to  my  father  and  make  friends  with  him,  then 
you  must  promise  that  I  shan't  be  frightened 
in  the  middle  of  the  night,  that  the  clock  won't 
tick  too  loudly,  that  the  blind  won't  flap,  that  it 
won't  all  be  too  dark  and  dreadful."  She  knew 
that  she  had  made  this  compact. 

Then  she  had  several  little  encounters  with 


NANCY  EOSS  165 

her  father.  She  met  him  one  day  on  the  door- 
step. He  had  come  up  whilst  she  was  standing- 
there. 

' '  Had  a  good  walk  1 "  he  said  nervously.  She 
looked  at  him  and  laughed.  Then  he  went 
hurriedly  indoors. 

On  the  second  occasion  she  had  come  down 
to  be  shown  off  at  a  luncheon  party.  She  had 
been  praised  and  petted,  and  then,  in  the  hall, 
had  run  into  her  father's  arms.  He  was  in  his 
top-hat,  going  down  to  his  old  city,  looking, 
the  nurse  thought,  "just  like  a  monkey."  But 
Nancy  stayed,  holding  on  to  the  leg  of  his 
trousers.  Suddenly  he  bent  down  and  whis- 
pered : 

"Were  they  nice  to  you  in  there?" 

' '  Yes.    Why  weren  't  you  there ! ' ' 

"I  was.    I  left.    Got  to  go  and  work." 

"What  sort  of  work?" 

* '  Making  money  for  your  clothes. ' ' 

"Take  me  too." 

"Would  you  like  to  come?" 

"Yes.    Take  me." 

He  bent  down  and  kissed  her,  but,  suddenly- 
hearing  the  voices  of  the  luncheon-party,  they 
separated  like  conspirators.  He  crept  out  of 
the  house. 


164       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

After  that  there  was  no  question  of  their  al- 
liance. The  sort  of  affection  that  most  chil- 
dren feel  for  old,  ugly,  and  battered  dolls, 
Nancy  now  felt  for  her  father,  and  the  warmth 
of  this  affection  melted  her  dried,  stubborn  lit- 
tle soul,  caught  her  up  into  visions,  wonders, 
sympathies  that  had  seemed  surely  denied  to 
her  for  ever. 

* '  Now  sit  still,  Miss  Nancy,  while  I  do  up  the 
back." 

"Oh,  silly  old  clothes!"  said  Nancy. 

Then  one  day  she  declared, 

"I  want  to  be  dirty  like  those  children  in  the 
garden. ' ' 

"And  a  nice  state  your  mother  would  be  in !" 
cried  the  amazed  nurse. 

"Father  wouldn't,"  Nancy  thought.  "Fa- 
ther wouldn't  mind." 

There  came  at  last  the  wonderful  day  when 
her  father  penetrated  into  the  nursery.  He 
arrived  furtively,  very  much,  it  appeared, 
ashamed  of  himself  and  exceedingly  shy  of  the 
nurse.  He  did  not  remain  very  long.  He  said 
very  little;  a  funny  picture  he  had  made  with 
his  blue  face,  his  black  shiny  hair,  his  fat  little 
legs,  and  his  anxious,  rather  stupid  eyes.  He 
sat  rather  awkwardly  in  a  chair,  with  Nancy 


NANCY  BOSS  165 

on  his  knee;  lie  wrung  his  hair  for  things  to 
say. 

The  nurse  left  them  for  a  moment  alone  to- 
gether, and  then  Nancy  whispered : 

" Daddy,  let's  go  into  the  gardens  togethery 
you  and  me;  just  us — no  silly  old  nurse — one 
mornin'."  (She  found  the  little  "g"  still  a 
difficulty.) 

" Would  you  like  that?"  he  whispered  back. 
"I  don't  know  I'd  be  much  good  in  a  garden." 

"Oh,  you'll  be  all  right,"  she  asserted  with 
confidence.  "I  want  to  dig." 

She'd  made  up  her  mind  then  to  that.  As 
Hannibal  determined  to  cross  the  Alps,  as  Na- 
poleon set  his  feet  towards  Moscow,  so  did 
Nancy  Boss  resolve  that  she  would,  in  the  com- 
pany of  her  father,  dig  in  the  gardens.  She 
stroked  her  father's  hand,  rubbed  her  head 
upon  his  sleeve;  exactly  as  she  would  have 
caressed,  had  she  been  another  little  girl,  the 
damaged  features  of  her  old  rag  doll.  She  was 
beginning,  however,  for  the  first  time  in  her 
life,  to  love  some  one  other  than  herself. 

He  came,  then,  quite  often  to  the  nursery- 
He  would  slip  in,  stay  a  moment  or  two,  and 
slip  out  again.  He  brought  her  presents  and 
sweets  which  made  her  ill.  And  always  in  the 


166       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

presence   of  Mrs.    Munty   they   appeared   as 
strangers. 

The  day  came  when  Nancy  achieved  her  de- 
sire— they  had  their  great  adventure. 


iv 

A  FINE  summer  morning  came,  and  with  it,  in 
a,  bowler  hat,  at  the  nursery  door,  the  hour  be- 
ing about  eleven,  Mr.  Munty  Ross. 

"I'll  take  Nancy  this  morning,  nurse,"  he 
said,  with  a  strange,  choking  little  " cluck"  in 
his  throat.  Now,  the  nurse,  although,  as  I've 
said,  of  a  shining  and  superficial  appearance, 
was  no  fool.  She  had  watched  the  development 
of  the  intrigue;  her  attitude  to  the  master  of 
the  house  was  composed  of  pity,  patronage, 
and  a  rather  motherly  interest.  She  did  not, 
see  how  her  mistress  could  avoid  her  attitude: 
it  was  precisely  the  attitude  that  she  would 
herself  have  adopted  in  that  position,  but, 
nevertheless,  she  was  sorry  for  the  man.  "So 
out  of  it  as  he  is ! "  Her  maternal  feelings  were 
uppermost  now.  "It's  nice  of  the  child,"  she 
thought,  "and  him  so  ugly." 

"Of  course,  sir,"  she  said. 

"We  shall  be  back  in  about  an  hour."    He 


NANCY  BOSS  167 

attempted  an  easy  indifference,  was  conscious 
that  he  failed,  and  blushed. 

He  was  aware  that  his  wife  was  out. 

He  carried  off  his  prize. 

The  gardens  were  very  full  on  this  lovely 
summer  morning,  but  Nancy,  without  any  em- 
barrassment or  confusion,  took  charge  of  the 
proceedings. 

" Where  are  we  going?"  he  said,  gazing 
rather  helplessly  about  him,  feeling  extremely 
shy.  There  were  so  many  bold  children — so 
many  bolder  nurses ;  even  the  birds  on  the  trees 
seemed  to  deride  him,  and  a  stumpy  fox-ter- 
rier puppy  stood  with  its  four  legs  planted 
wide  barking  at  him. 

"Over  here,"  she  said  without  a  moment's 
hesitation,  and  she  dragged  him  along.  She 
halted  at  last  in  a  corner  of  the  gardens  where 
was  a  large,  overhanging  chestnut  and  a  wood- 
en seat.  Here  the  shouts  and  cries  of  the  chil- 
dren came  more  dimly,  the  splashing  of  the 
fountain  could  be  heard  like  a  melodious  re- 
frain with  a  fascinating  note  of  hesitation  in 
it,  and  the  deep  green  leaves  of  the  tree  made 
a  cool,  thick  covering.  "Very  nice,"  he  said, 
and  sat  down  on  the  seat,  tilting  his  hat  back 
and  feeling  very  happy  indeed. 


168       THE  GOLDEN  SCAKECROW 

Nancy  also  was  very  happy.  There,  in  front 
of  her,  was  the  delightful  pile  of  earth  and  sand 
untouched,  it  seemed.  In  an  instant,  regardless 
of  her  frock,  she  was  down  upon  her  knees. 

"I  ought  to  have  a  spade,"  she  said. 

"You'll  make  yourself  dreadfully  dirty, 
Nancy.  Your  beautiful  frock—  But  he 

had  nevertheless  the  feeling  that,  after  all,  he 
had  paid  for  it,  and  if  he  hadn't  the  right  to 
see  it  ruined,  who  hadl 

1 1  Oh ! ' '  she  murmured  with  the  ecstasy  of  one 
who  has  abandoned  herself,  freely  and  with  a 
glad  heart,  to  all  the  vices.  She  dug  her  hands 
into  the  mire,  she  scattered  it  about  her,  she 
scooped  and  delved  and  excavated.  It  was  her 
intention  to  build  something  in  the  nature  of  a 
high,  high  hill.  She  patted  the  surface  of  the 
sand,  and  behold!  it  was  instantly  a  beautiful 
shape,  very  smooth  and  shining. 

It  was  hot,  her  hat  fell  back,  her  knees  were 
thick  with  the  good  brown  earth — that  once 
lovely  creation  of  Florice  was  stained  and 
black. 

She  then  began  softly,  partly  to  herself,  part- 
ly to  her  father,  and  partly  to  that  other  Friend 
who  had  helped  her  to  these  splendours,  a  song 
of  joy  and  happiness.  To  the  ordinary  ob- 


NANCY  BOSS  169 

server,  it  might  have  seemed  merely  a  dis- 
cordant noise  proceeding  from  a  little  girl  en- 
gaged in  the  making  of  mud  pies.  It  was,  in 
reality,  as  the  chestnut  tree,  the  birds,  the  foun- 
tain, the  flowers,  the  various  small  children, 
even  the  very  earth  she  played  with,  under- 
stood, a  fine  offering — thanksgiving  and  tri- 
umphal paean  to  the  God  of  Heaven,  of  the 
earth,  and  of  the  waters  that  were  under  the 
earth. 

Munty  himself  caught  the  refrain.  He  was 
recalled  to  a  day  when  mud  pies  had  been  to 
him  also  things  of  surpassing  joy.  There  was 
a  day  when,  a  naked  and  very  ugly  little  boy, 
he  had  danced  beside  a  mountain  burn. 

He  looked  upon  his  daughter  and  his  daugh- 
ter looked  upon  him;  they  were  friends  for 
ever  and  ever.  She  rose;  her  fingers  were  so 
sticky  with  mud  that  they  stood  apart;  down 
her  right  cheek  ran  a  fine  black  smear;  her 
knees  were  caked. 

"Good  heavens!"  he  exclaimed.  She  flung 
herself  upon  him  and  kissed  him;  down  his 
cheek  also  now  a  fine  smear  marked  its  way. 

He  looked  at  his  watch — one  o  'clock.  *  *  Good 
heavens!"  he  said  again.  "I  say,  old  girl, 
we'll  have  to  be  going.  Mother's  got  a  party. 


?  ? 


170        THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

He  tried  ineffectually  to  cleanse  his  daughter's 
face. 

"We'll  come  back,"  she  cried,  looking  down 
triumphantly  upon  her  handiwork. 

"We'll  have  to  smuggle  you  up  into  the 
nursery  somehow."  But  he  added,  "Yes,  we'll 
come  again." 


THEY  hurried  home.  Very  furtively  Munty 
Ross  fitted  his  key  into  the  Yale  lock  of  his  fine 
door.  They  slipped  into  the  hall.  There  before 
them  were  Mrs.  Ross  and  two  of  her  most 
splendid  friends.  Very  fine  was  Munty 's  wife 
in  a  tight-clinging  frock  of  light  blue,  and  wear- 
ing upon  her  head  a  hat  like  a  waste-paper 
basket  with  a  blue  handle  at  the  back  of  it; 
very  fine  were  her  two  lady  friends,  clothed 
also  in  the  tightest  of  garments,  shining  and 
lovely  and  precious. 
"Good  God,  Munty— and  the  child!" 
It  was  a  terrible  moment.  Quite  unconscious 
was  Munty  of  the  mud  that  stained  his  cheek, 
perfectly  tranquil  his  daughter  as  she  gazed 
with  glowing  happiness  about  her.  A  terrible 
moment  for  Mrs.  Ross,  an  unforgettable  one 


NANCY  BOSS  171 

for  her  friends;  nor  were  they  likely  to  keep 
the  humour  of  it  entirely  to  themselves. 

"Down  in  a  minute.  Going  up  to  clean." 
Smiling,  he  passed  his  wife.  On  the  bottom 
step  Nancy  chanted: 

"We've  had  the  most  lovely  mornin',  daddy 
and  I.  We've  been  diggin'.  We're  goin'  to 
dig  again.  Aren't  I  dirty,  mummy  If" 

Bound  the  corner  of  the  stairs  in  the  shadow 
Nancy  kissed  her  father  again. 

"I'm  never  goin'  to  be  clean  any  more,"  she 
announced.  And  you  may  fancy,  if  you  please, 
that  somewhere  in  the  shadows  of  the  house 
some  one  heard  those  words  and  chuckled  with 
delighted  pleasure. 


CHAPTER  VI 


ENEBT 


MRS.  SLATER  was  caretaker  at  No.  21 
March  Square.  Old  Lady  Cathcart 
lived  with  her  middle-aged  daughter  at  No.  21, 
and,  during  half  the  year,  they  were  down  at 
their  place  in  Essex ;  during  half  the  year,  then, 
Mrs.  Slater  lived  in  the  basement  of  No.  21 
with  her  son  Henry,  aged  six. 

Mrs.  Slater  was  a  widow;  upon  a  certain 
afternoon,  two  and  a  half  years  ago,  she  had 
paused  in  her  ironing  and  listened.  "Some- 
thing," she  told  her  friends  afterwards, 
"gave  her  a  start — she  couldn't  say  what  nor 
how."  Her  ironing  stayed,  for  that  afternoon 
at  least,  where  it  was,  because  her  husband, 
with  his  head  in  a  pulp  and  his  legs  bent  un- 
derneath him,  was  brought  in  on  a  stretcher, 
attended  by  two  policemen.  He  had  fallen 

172 


'ENERY  173 

from  a  piece  of  scaffolding  into  Piccadilly  Cir- 
cus, and  was  unable  to  afford  any  further  as- 
sistance to  the  improvements  demanded  by  the 
Pavilion  Music  Hall.  Mrs.  Slater,  a  stout, 
amiable  woman,  who  had  never  been  one  to 
worry;  Henry  Slater,  Senior,  had  been  a  bad 
husband,  "what  with  women  and  the  drink" 
— she  had  no  intention  of  lamenting  him  now 
that  he  was  dead;  she  had  done  for  ever  with 
men,  and  devoted  the  whole  of  her  time  and 
energy  to  providing  bread  and  butter  for  her- 
self and  her  son. 

She  had  been  Lady  Cathcart's  caretaker  for 
a  year  and  a  half,  and  had  given  every  satis- 
faction. When  the  old  lady  came  up  to  Lon- 
don Mrs.  Slater  went  down  to  Essex  and  de- 
fended the  country  place  from  suffragettes  and 
burglars.  "I  shouldn't  care  for  it,"  said  a 
lady  friend,  "all  alone  in  the  country  with  no 
cheerful  noises  nor  human  beings." 

"Doesn't  frighten  me,  I  give  you  my  word, 
Mrs.  East,"  said  Mrs.  Slater;  "not  that  I 
don't  prefer  the  town,  mind  you." 

It  was,  on  the  whole,  a  pleasant  life,  that 
carried  with  it  a  certain  dignity.  Nobody 
who  had  seen  old  Lady  Cathcart  drive  in  her 
open  carriage,  with  her  black  bonnet,  her 


174       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

coachman,  and  her  fine,  straight  back,  could 
deny  that  she  was  one  of  Our  Oldest  and  Best 
— none  of  your  mushroom  families  come  from 
Lord  knows  where — it  was  a  position  of  trust, 
and  as  such  Mrs.  Slater  considered  it.  For  the 
rest  she  loved  her  son  Henry  with  more  than 
a  mother's  love;  he  was  as  unlike  his  poor  fa- 
ther, bless  him,  as  any  child  could  be.  Henry, 
although  you  would  never  think  it  to  look  at 
him,  was  not  quite  like  other  children;  he  had 
been,  from  his  birth,  a  "little  queer,  bless  his 
heart,"  and  Mrs.  Slater  attributed  this  to  the 
fact  that  three  weeks  before  the  boy's  birth, 
Henry  Slater,  Senior,  had,  in  a  fine  frenzy  of 
inebriation,  hit  her  over  the  head  with  a  chair. 
"Dead  drunk,  'e  was,  and  never  a  thought  to 
the  child  coming,  '  'Enery,'  I  said  to  him,  'it's 
the  child  you're  hitting  as  well  as  me';  but  'e 
was  too  far  gone,  poor  soul,  to  take  a  thought. ' ' 
Henry  was  a  fine,  robust  child,  with  rosy 
cheeks  and  a  sturdy,  thick-set  body.  He  had 
large  blue  eyes  and  a  happy,  pleasant  smile, 
but,  although  he  was  six  years  of  age,  he  could 
hardly  talk  at  all,  and  liked  to  spend  the  days 
twirling  pieces  of  string  round  and  round  or 
looking  into  the  fire.  His  eyes  were  unlike  the 
eyes  of  other  children,  and  in  their  blue  depths 


'ENERY  175 

there  lurked  strange  apprehensions,  strange 
anticipations,  strange  remembrances.  He  had 
never,  from  the  day  of  his  birth,  been  known  to 
cry.  When  he  was  frightened  or  distressed  the 
colour  would  pass  slowly  from  his  cheeks,  and 
strange  little  gasping  breaths  would  come  from 
him;  his  body  would  stiffen  and  his  hands 
clench.  If  he  was  angry  the  colour  in  his  face 
would  darken  and  his  eyes  half  close,  and  it 
was  then  that  he  did,  indeed,  seem  in  the  pos- 
session of  some  disastrous  thraldom — but  he 
was  angry  very  seldom,  and  only  with  certain 
people ;  for  the  most  part  he  was  a  happy  child, 
"as  quiet  as  a  mouse."  He  was  unusual,  too, 
in  that  he  was  a  very  cleanly  child,  and  loved 
to  be  washed,  and  took  the  greatest  care  of  his 
clothes.  He  was  very  affectionate,  fond  of  al- 
most every  one,  and  passionately  devoted  to 
his  mother. 

Mrs.  Slater  was  a  woman  with  very  little 
imagination.  She  never  speculated  on  "how 
different  things  would  be  if  they  were  differ- 
ent," nor  did  she  sigh  after  riches,  nor  posses- 
sions, nor  any  of  the  goods  Fate  bestows  upon 
her  favourites.  She  would,  most  certainly,  have 
been  less  fond  of  Henry  had  he  been  more  like 
other  children,  and  his  dependence  upon  her 


176       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

gave  her  something  of  the  feeling  that  very 
rich  ladies  have  for  very  small  dogs.  She  was 
too,  in  a  way,  proud.  "Never  been  able  to  talk, 
nor  never  will,  they  tell  me,  the  lamb,"  she 
would  assure  her  friends,  "but  as  gentle  and 
as  quiet!" 

She  would  sit,  sometimes,  in  the  evening 
before  the  fire  and  think  of  the  old  noisy, 
tiresome  days  when  Henry,  Senior,  would 
beat  her  black  and  blue,  and  would  feel 
that  her  life  had  indeed  fallen  into  pleasant 
places. 

There  was  nothing  whatever  in  the  house,  all 
silent  about  her  and  filled  with  shrouded  fur- 
niture, that  could  alarm  her.  "Ghosts!"  she 
would  cry.  "You  show  me  one,  that's  all.  I'll 
give  you  ghosts!" 

Her  digestion  was  excellent,  her  sleep  un- 
disturbed by  conscience  or  creditors.  She  was 
a  happy  woman. 

Henry  loved  March  Square.  There  was  a 
window  in  an  upstairs  passage  from  behind 
whose  glass  he  could  gaze  at  the  passing  world. 
The  Passing  World!  .  .  .  the  shrouded  house 
behind  him.  One  was  as  alive,  as  bustling,  as 
demonstrative  to  him  as  the  other,  but  between 
the  two  there  was,  for  him,  no  communication. 


'ENEBY  177 

His  attitude  to  the  Square  and  the  people  in 
it  was  that  he  knew  more  about  them  than  any 
one  else  did ;  his  attitude  to  the  House,  that  he 
knew  nothing  at  all  compared  with  what 
"They"  knew.  In  the  Square  he  could  see 
through  the  lot  of  them,  so  superficial  were 
they  all ;  in  the  House  he  could  only  wait,  with 
fingers  on  lip,  for  the  next  revelation  that  they 
might  vouchsafe  to  him. 

Doors  were,  for  the  most  part,  locked,  yet 
there  were  many  days  when  the  rooms  had  to 
be  dusted,  and  sometimes  fires  were  lit  because 
the  house  was  an  old  one,  and  damp  Lady  Cath- 
cart  had  a  horror  of. 

Always  for  young  Henry  the  house  wore  its 
buried  and  abandoned  air.  He  was  never  to  see 
it  when  the  human  beings  in  it  would  count 
more  than  its  furniture,  and  the  human  life  in 
it  more  than  the  house  itself.  He  had  come,  a 
year  and  a  half  ago,  into  the  very  place  that 
his  dreams  had,  from  the  beginning,  built  for 
him.  Those  large,  high  rooms  with  the  shin- 
ing floors,  the  hooded  furniture,  the  windows 
gaping  without  their  curtains,  the  shadows  and 
broad  squares  of  light,  the  little  whispers  and 
rattles  that  doors  and  cupboards  gave,  the 
swirl  of  the  wind  as  it  sprang  released  from 


178       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

corners  and  crevices,  the  lisp  of  some  whisper, 
"I'm  coming!  I'm  coming!  I'm  coming!" 
that,  nevertheless,  again  and  again  defeated  ex- 
pectation. How  could  he  but  enjoy  the  fine 
field  of  affection  that  these  provided  for  him? 

His  mother  watched  him  with  maternal 
pride.  "He's  that  contented!"  she  would  say. 
"Any  other  child  would  plague  your  life  away, 
but  'Enery " 

It  was  part  of  Henry's  unusual  mind  that  he 
wondered  at  nothing.  He  remained  in  constant 
expectation,  but  whatever  was  to  come  to  him 
it  would  not  bring  surprise  with  it.  He  was 
in  a  world  where  anything  might  happen.  In 
all  the  house  his  favourite  room  was  the  high, 
thin  drawing-room  with  an  old  gold  mirror  at 
one  end  of  it  and  a  piano  muffled  in  brown 
holland.  The  mirror  caught  the  piano  with  its 
peaked  inquiring  shape,  that,  in  its  inflection, 
looked  so  much  more  tremendous  and  ominous 
than  it  did  in  plain  reality.  Through  the  mir- 
ror the  piano  looked  as  though  it  might  do 
anything,  and  to  Henry,  who  knew  nothing 
about  pianos,  it  was  responsible  for  almost 
everything  that  occurred  in  the  house. 

The  windows  of  the  room  gave  a  fine  display 
of  the  gardens,  the  children,  the  carriages,  and 


'ENERY  179 

the  distant  houses,  but  it  was  when  the  Square 
was  empty  that  Henry  liked  best  to  gaze  down 
into  it,  because  then  the  empty  house  and  the 
empty  square  prepared  themselves  together 
for  some  tremendous  occurrence.  Whenever 
such  an  interval  of  silence  struck  across  the 
noise  and  traffic  of  the  day,  it  seemed  that  all 
the  world  screwed  itself  up  for  the  next  event. 
"One — two — three."  But '  the  crisis  never 
came.  The  noise  returned  again,  people 
laughed  and  shouted,  bells  rang  and  motors 
screamed.  Nevertheless,  one  day  something 
would  surely  happen. 

The  house  was  full  of  company,  and  the  boy 
would,  sometimes,  have  yielded  to  the  Fear  that 
was  never  far  away,  had  it  not  been  for  some 
one  whom  he  had  known  from  the  very  begin- 
ning of  everything,  some  one  who  was  as  real 
as  his  mother,  some  one  who  was  more  power- 
ful than  anything  or  any  one  in  the  house,  and 
kinder,  far,  far  kinder. 

Often  when  Mrs.  Slater  would  wonder  of 
what  her  son  was  thinking  as  he  sat  twisting 
string  round  and  round  in  front  of  the  fire, 
he  would  be  aware  of  his  Friend  in  the  shadow 
of  the  light,  watching  gravely,  in  the  cheerful 
room,  having  beneath  his  hands  all  the  powers, 


180       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

good  and  evil,  of  the  house.  Just  as  Henry 
pictured  quite  clearly  to  himself  other  occu- 
pants of  the  house — some  one  with  taloned 
claws  behind  the  piano,  another  with  black- 
hooded  eyes  and  a  peaked  cap  in  the  shadows 
of  an  upstairs  passage,  another  brown,  shriv- 
elled and  naked,  who  dwelt  in  a  cupboard  in 
one  of  the  empty  bedrooms  so,  too,  he  could  see 
his  Friend,  vast  and  shadowy,  with  a  flow- 
ing beard  and  eyes  that  were  kind  and  shin- 
ing. 

Often  he  had  felt  the  pressure  of  his  hand, 
had  heard  his  reassuring  whisper  in  his  ears, 
had  known  the  touch  of  his  lips  upon  his  fore- 
head. No  harm  could  come  to  him  whilst  his 
Friend  was  in  the  house — and  his  Friend  was 
always  there. 

He  went  always  with  his  mother  into  the 
streets  when  she  did  her  shopping  or  simply 
took  the  air.  It  was  natural  that  on  these  oc- 
casions, he  should  be  more  frightened  than 
during  his  hours  in  the  house.  In  the  first 
place  his  Friend  did  not  accompany  him  on 
these  out-of-door  excursions,  and  his  mother 
was  not  nearly  so  strong  a  protector  as  his 
Friend. 

Then  he  was  disturbed  by  the  people  who 


'ENEBY  181 

pressed  and  pushed  about  him — he  had  a  sense 
that  they  were  all  like  birds  with  flapping  wings 
and  strange  cries,  rushing  down  upon  him — 
the  colours  and  confusion  of  the  shops  bewil- 
dered him.  There  was  too  much  here  for  him 
properly  to  understand;  he  had  enough  to  do 
with  the  piano,  the  mirror,  the  shadowed  pas- 
sages, the  staring  windows. 

But  in  the  Square  he  was  happy  again.  Mrs. 
Slater  never  ventured  into  the  gardens;  they 
were  for  her  superiors,  and  she  complacently 
accepted  a  world  in  which  things  were  so  or- 
dered as  the  only  world  possible.  But  there 
was  plenty  of  life  outside  the  gardens. 

There  were,  on  the  different  days  of  the 
week,  the  various  musicians,  and  Henry  was 
friendly  with  them  all.  He  delighted  in  music; 
as  he  stood  there,  listening  to  the  barrel-organ, 
the  ideas,  pictures,  dreams,  flew  like  flocks  of 
beautiful  birds  through  his  brain,  fleet,  and  al- 
ways just  beyond  his  reach,  so  that  he  could 
catch  nothing,  but  would  nod  his  head  and 
would  hope  that  the  tune  would  be  repeated, 
because  next  time  he  might,  perhaps,  be  more 
fortunate. 

The  Major,  who  played  the  harp  on  Satur- 
days, was  a  friend  of  Mrs.  Slater.  ' '  Nice  little 


182       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

feller,  that  of  yours,  mum,"  he  would  say. 
* '  'Ad  one  meself  once. ' ' 

"Indeed!" 

"Yes,  sure  enough.  .  .  .  Nice  day.  .  .  . 
Would  you  believe  it,  this  is  the  only  London 
square  left  for  us  to  play  in!  ...  'Tis,  in- 
deed. Cruel  shame,  I  call  it;  life's  'ard.  .  .  . 
You're  right,  mum,  it  is.  Well,  good-day." 

Mrs.  Slater  looked  after  him  affectionately. 
"Pore  feller;  and  yet  I  dare  say  he  makes  a 
pretty  hit  of  it  if  all  was  known." 

Henry  sighed.  The  birds  were  flown  again. 
He  was  left  with  the  blue-flecked  sky  and  the 
grey  houses  that  stood  around  the  gardens  like 
beasts  about  a  water-pool.  The  sun  (a  red  disc) 
peered  over  their  shoulders.  He  went  with  his 
mother  within  doors.  Instantly  on  his  en- 
trance the  house  began  to  rustle  and  whisper. 


MRS.  SLATER,  although  an  amiable  and  kind- 
hearted  human  being  who  believed  with  confi- 
dent superstition  in  a  God  of  other  people's 
making,  did  not,  on  the  whole,  welcome  her 
lady  friends  with  much  cordiality.  It  was  not, 
as  she  often  explained,  as  though  she  had  her 


'ENERY  183 

own  house  into  which  to  ask  them.  Her  motto 
was,  ''Friendly  with  All,  Familiar  with  None," 
and  to  this  she  very  faithfully  held.  But  in  her 
heart  there  was  reason  enough  for  this  cau- 
tion ;  there  had  been  days — yes,  and  nights  too 
• — when,  during  her  lamented  husband's  life- 
time, she  had  "taken  a  drop,"  taken  it,  ob- 
viously enough,  as  a  comfort  and  a  solace 
when  things  were  going  very  hard  with  her,  and 
"  'Enery  preferrin'  'er  to  be  jolly  'erself  to 
keep  'im  company."  She  had  protested,  but 
Fate  and  Henry  had  been  too  strong  for  her. 
"She  had  fallen  into  the  habit!"  Then,  when 
No.  21  had  come  under  her  care,  she  had  put  it 
all  sternly  behind  her,  but  one  did  not  know 
how  weak  one  might  be,  and  a  kindly  friend 

might  with  her  persuasion 

Therefore  did  Mrs.  Slater  avoid  her  kindly 
friends.  There  was,  however,  one  friend  who 
was  not  so  readily  to  be  avoided ;  that  was  Mrs. 
Carter.  Mrs.  Carter  also  was  a  widow,  or 
rather,  to  speak  the  direct  truth,  had  discov- 
ered one  morning,  twenty  years  ago,  that  Mr. 
Carter  "was  gone";  he  had  never  returned. 
Those  who  knew  Mrs.  Carter  intimately  said 
that,  on  the  whole,  "things  bein'  as  they  was," 
his  departure  was  not  entirely  to  be  wondered 


184       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

at.  Mrs.  Carter  had  a  temper  of  her  own,  and 
nothing  inflamed  it  so  much  as  a  drop  of  whisky, 
and  there  was  nothing  in  the  world  she  liked  so 
much  as  "a  drop." 

To  meet  her  casually,  you  would  judge  her 
nothing  less  than  the  most  amiable  of  woman- 
kind— a  large,  stout,  jolly  woman,  with  a  face 
like  a  rose,  and  a  quantity  of  black  hair.  At 
her  best,  in  her  fine  Sunday  clothes,  she  was  a 
superb  figure,  and  wore  round  her  neck  a  rope 
of  sham  pearls  that  would  have  done  credit 
to  a  sham  countess.  During  the  week,  how- 
ever, she  slipped,  on  occasion,  into  "deshabille," 
and  then  she  appeared  not  quite  so  attractive. 
No  one  knew  the  exact  nature  of  her  profession. 
She  did  a  bit  of  "char";  she  had  at  one  time 
a  little  sweetshop,  where  she  sold  sweets,  the 
Police  Budget,  and — although  this  was  revealed 
only  to  her  best  friends — indecent  photographs. 
It  may  be  that  the  police  discovered  some  of  the 
sources  of  her  income;  at  any  rate  the  sweet- 
shop was  suddenly,  one  morning,  abandoned. 
Her  movements  in  everything  were  sudden;  it 
was  quite  suddenly  that  she  took  a  fancy  to 
Mrs.  Slater.  She  met  her  at  a  friend's,  and  at 
once,  so  she  told  Mrs.  Slater, ' '  I  liked  yer,  just 
as  though  I'd  met  yer  before.  But  I'm  like 


'ENEKY  185 

that.  Sudden  or  not  at  all  is  my  way,  and  not 
a  bad  way  either!" 

Mrs.  Slater  could  not  be  said  to  be  every- 
thing that  was  affectionate  in  return.  She  dis- 
trusted Mrs.  Carter,  disliked  her  brilliant  col- 
ouring and  her  fluent  experiences,  felt  shy  be- 
fore her  rollicking  suggestiveness,  and  timid 
at  her  innuendoes.  For  a  considerable  time 
she  held  her  defences  against  the  insidious  at- 
tack. Then  there  came  a  day  when  Mrs.  Car- 
ter burst  into  reluctant  but  passionate  tears, 
asserting  that  Life  and  Mr.  Carter  had  been, 
from  the  beginning,  against  her;  that  she  had 
committed,  indeed,  acts  of  folly  in  the  past, 
but  only  when  driven  desperately  against  a 
wall;  that  she  bore  no  grudge  against  any  one 
alive,  but  loved  all  humanity ;  that  she  was  go- 
ing to  do  her  best  to  be  a  better  woman,  but 
couldn't  really  hope  to  arrive  at  any  satisfac- 
tory improvement  without  Mrs.  Slater's  assist- 
ance; that  Mrs.  Slater,  indeed,  had  shown  her 
a  New  Way,  a  New  Light,  a  New  Path. 

Mrs.  Slater,  humble  woman,  had  no  illusions 
as  to  her  own  importance  in  the  scheme  of 
things;  nothing  touched  her  so  surely  as  an 
appeal  to  her  strength  of  character.  She  re- 
ceived Mrs.  Carter  with  open  arms,  suggested 4 


186       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

that  they  should  read  the  Bible  together  on 
Sunday  mornings,  and  go,  side  by  side,  to  St. 
Matthew's  on  Sunday  evenings.  There  was 
nothing  like  a  study  of  the  "Holy  Word"  for 
11  defeating  the  bottle,"  and  there  was  nothing 
like  " defeating  the  bottle"  for  getting  back 
one's  strength  and  firmness  of  character. 

It  was  along  these  lines  that  Mrs.  Slater  pro- 
posed to  conduct  Mrs.  Carter. 

Now  unfortunately  Henry  took  an  instant 
and  truly  savage  dislike  to  his  mother's  new 
friend.  He  had  been  always,  of  course, ' '  odd ' ' 
in  his  feelings  about  people,  but  never  was  he 
" odder"  than  he  was  with  Mrs.  Carter.  "Lit- 
tle lamb,"  she  said,  when  she  saw  him  for  the 
first  time.  "I  envy  you  that  child,  Mrs.  Slater, 
I  do  indeed.  Backwards  'e  may  be,  but  'is  be- 
ing dependent,  as  you  may  say,  touches  the 
'cart.  Little  lamb!" 

She  tried  to  embrace  him;  she  offered  him 
sweets.  He  shuddered  at  her  approach,  and 
his  face  was  instantly  grey,  like  a  pool  the  mo- 
ment after  the  sun's  setting.  Had  he  been  him- 
self able  to  put  into  words  his  sensations,  he 
would  have  said  that  the  sight  of  Mrs.  Carter 
assured  him,  quite  definitely,  that  something 
horrible  would  soon  occur. 


'ENERY  187 

The  house  upon  whose  atmosphere  he  so  de- 
pended instantly  darkened;,  his  Friend  was 
gone,  not  because  he  was  no  longer  able  to  see 
him  (his  consciousness  of  him  did  not  depend 
at  all  upon  any  visual  assurance),  but  because 
there  was  now,  Henry  was  perfectly  assured, 
no  chance  whatever  of  his  suddenly  appearing. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  those  Others — the  one 
with  the  taloned  claws  behind  the  piano,  the  one 
with  the  black-hooded  eyes — were  stronger, 
more  threatening,  more  dominating.  But,  be- 
yond her  influence  on  the  house,  Mrs.  Carter, 
in  her  own  physical  and  actual  presence,  tor- 
tured Henry.  When  she  was  in  the  room, 
Henry  suffered  agony.  He  would  creep  away 
were  he  allowed,  and,  if  that  were  not  possible, 
then  he  would  retreat  into  the  most  distant 
corner  and  watch.  If  he  were  in  the  room  his 
eyes  never  left  Mrs.  Carter  for  a  moment,  and 
it  was  this  brooding  gaze  more  than  his  dis- 
approval that  irritated  her.  "You  never  can 
tell  with  poor  little  dears  when  they're  ' queer* 
what  fancies  they'll  take.  Why,  he  quite  seems 
to  dislike  me,  Mrs.  Slater ! ' ' 

Mrs.  Slater  could  venture  no  denial;  indeed, 
Henry's  attitude  aroused  once  again  in  her 
mind  her  earlier  suspicions.  She  had  all  the 


188       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECBOW 

reverence  of  her  class  for  her  son's  "oddness." 
He  knew  more  than  ordinary  mortal  folk,  and 
could  see  farther;  he  saw  beyond  Mrs.  Carter's 
red  cheeks  and  shining  black  hair,  and  the  fact 
that  he  was,  as  a  rule,  tractable  to  cheerful 
kindness,  made  his  rejection  the  more  remark- 
able. But  it  might,  nevertheless,  be  that  the 
black  things  in  Mrs.  Carter's  past  were  the 
marks  impressed  upon  Henry's  sensitive  intel- 
ligence ;  and  that  he  had  not,  as  yet,  perceived 
the  new  Mrs.  Carter  growing  in  grace  now  day 
by  day. 

"  'E'll  get  over  'is  fancy,  bless  'is  'eart." 
Mrs.  Slater  pursued  then  her  work  of  redemp- 
tion. 


m 

ON  a  certain  evening  in  November,  Mrs.  Car- 
ter, coming  in  to  see  her  friend,  invited  sym- 
pathy for  a  very  bad  cold. 

"Drippin'  and  runnin'  at  the  nose  I've  been 
all  day,  my  dear.  Awake  all  night  I  was  with 
it,  and  'tain't  often  that  I've  one,  but  when  I 
do  it's  somethin*  cruel."  It  seemed  to  be  bet- 
ter this  evening,  Mrs.  Slater  thought,  but  when 
she  congratulated  her  friend  on  this,  Mrs.  Car- 


'ENEET  189 

ter,  shaking  her  head,  remarked  that  it  had 
left  the  nose  and  travelled  into  the  throat  and 
ears.  "Once  it's  earache,  and  I'm  done," 
she  said.  Horrible  pictures  she  drew  of 
this  earache,  and  it  presently  became  clear 
that  Mrs.  Carter  was  in  perfect  terror  of  a 
night  made  sleepless  with  pain.  Once,  it 
seemed,  had  Mrs.  Carter  tried  to  commit  sui- 
cide by  hanging  herself  to  a  nail  in  a  door,  so 
maddening  had  the  torture  been.  Luckily 
(Mrs.  Carter  thanked  Heaven)  the  nail  had 
been  dragged  from  the  door  by  her  weight — 
"not  that  I  was  anything  very  'eavy,  you  un- 
derstand." Finally,  it  appeared  that  only  one 
thing  in  the  world  could  be  relied  upon  to  stay 
the  fiend. 

Mrs.  Carter  produced  from  her  pocket  a  bot- 
tle of  whisky. 

Upon  that  it  followed  that,  since  her  refor- 
mation, Mrs.  Carter  had  come  to  loathe  the 
very  smell  of  whisky,  and  as  for  the  taste  of 
it !  But  rather  than  be  driven  by  flaming  agony 
down  the  long  stony  passages  of  a  sleepless 
night — anything. 

It  was  here,  of  course,  that  Mrs.  Slater 
should  have  protested,  but,  in  her  heart,  she 
was  afraid  of  her  friend,  and  afraid  of  herself. 


190       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

Mrs.  Carter's  company  had,  of  late,  been  pleas- 
ant to  her.  She  had  been  strengthened  in  her 
own  resolves  towards  a  fine  life  by  the  sight  of 
Mrs.  Carter's  struggle  in  that  direction,  and 
that  good  woman's  genial  amiability  (when  it 
was  so  obvious  from  her  appearance  that  she 
could  be  far  otherwise)  flattered  Mrs.  Slater's 
sense  of  power.  No,  she  could  not  now  bear  to 
let  Mrs.  Carter  go. 

She  said,  therefore,  nothing  to  her  friend 
about  the  whisky,  and  on  that  evening  Mrs. 
Carter  did  take  the  ''veriest  sip."  But  the 
cold  continued — it  continued  in  a  marvellous 
and  terrible  manner.  It  seemed  '  *  to  'ave  taken 
right  'old  of  'er  system." 

After  a  few  evenings  it  was  part  of  the  cere- 
monies that  the  bottle  should  be  produced;  the 
kettle  was  boiling  happily  on  the  fire,  there 
was  lemon,  there  was  a  lump  of  sugar.  .  .  . 
On  a  certain  wet  and  depressing  evening  Mrs. 
Slater  herself  had  a  glass  "just  to  see  that  she 
didn't  get  a  cold  like  Mrs.  Carter's." 

IV 

HENBY'S  bedtime  was  somewhere  between  the 
hours  of  eight  and  nine,  but  his  mother  did 


'ENERY  191 

not  care  to  leave  Mrs.  Carter  (dear  friend, 
though  she  was)  quite  alone  downstairs  with 
the  bottom  half  of  the  house  unguarded  (al- 
though, of  course,  the  doors  were  locked), 
therefore,  Mrs.  Carter  came  upstairs  with  her 
friend  to  see  the  little  fellow  put  to  bed ;  ' '  and 
a  hangel  he  looks,  if  ever  I  see  one,"  declared 
the  lady  enthusiastically. 

When  the  two  were  gone  and  the  house  was 
still,  Henry  would  sit  up  in  bed  and  listen; 
then,  moving  quietly,  he  would  creep  out  and 
listen  again. 

There,  in  the  passage,  it  seemed  to  him  that 
he  could  hear  the  whole  house  talking — first 
one  sound  and  then  another  would  come,  the 
wheeze  of  some  straining  floor,  the  creak  of 
some  whispering  board,  the  shudder  of  a  door. 
"Look  out!  Look  out!  Look  out!"  and  then, 
above  that  murmur,  some  louder  voice: 
"Watch!  there's  danger  in  the  place!"  Then, 
shivering  with  cold  and  his  sense  of  evil,  he 
would  creep  down  into  a  lower  passage  and 
stand  listening  again;  now  the  voices  of  the 
house  were  deafening,  rising  on  every  side  of 
him,  like  the  running  of  little  streams  sudden- 
ly heard  on  the  turning  of  the  corner  of  a  hill. 
The  dim  light  shrouded  with  fantasy  the  walls ; 


192       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

along  the  wide  passage  and  cabinets,  high 
china  jars,  the  hollow  scoop  of  the  window  at 
the  far-distant  end,  were  all  alive  and  moving. 
And,  in  strange  contradiction  to  the  moving 
voices  within  the  house,  came  the  blurred  echo 
of  the  London  life,  whirring,  buzzing,  like  a 
cloud  of  gnats  at  the  window-pane.  ' '  Look  out  1 
Look  out!  Look  out!"  the  house  cried,  and 
Henry,  with  chattering  teeth,  was  on  guard. 

There  came  an  evening  when  standing  thus, 
shivering  in  his  little  shirt,  he  was  aware  that 
the  terror,  so  long  anticipated,  was  upon  him. 
It  seemed  to  him,  on  this  evening,  that  the 
house  was  suddenly  still;  it  was  as  though  all 
the  sounds,  as  of  running  water,  that  passed  up 
and  down  the  rooms  and  passages,  were,  in  a 
flashing  second,  frozen.  The  house  was  hold- 
ing its  breath. 

He  had  to  wait  for  a  breathless,  agonisirig 
interval  before  he  heard  tte  next  sound,  very 
faint  and  stifled  breathing  coming  up  to  him 
out  of  the  darkness  in  little  uncertain  gusts. 
He  heard  the  breathings  pause,  then  recom- 
mence again  in  quicker  and  louder  succession. 
Henry,  stirred  simply,  perhaps,  by  the  terror 
of  his  anticipation,  moved  back  into  the  darker 
shadows  in  the  nook  of  the  cabinet,  and  stayed 


'ENEBY  193 

there  with  his  shirt  pressed  against  his  little 
trembling  knees. 

Then  followed,  after  a  long  time,  a  half  yel- 
low circle  of  light  that  touched  the  top  steps 
of  the  stairs  and  a  square  of  the  wall;  behind 
the  light  was  the  stealthy  figure  of  Mrs.  Carter. 
She  stood  there  for  a  moment,  one  hand  with 
a  candle  raised,  the  other  pressed  against  her 
breast ;  from  one  finger  of  this  hand  a  bunch  of 
heavy  keys  dangled.  She  stood  there,  with  her 
wide,  staring  eyes,  like  glass  in  the  candle- 
light, staring  about  her,  her  red  cheeks  rising 
and  falling  with  her  agitation,  her  body  seem- 
ing enormous,  her  shadow  on  the  wall  huge  in 
the  flickering  light.  At  the  sight  of  his  enemy 
Henry's  terror  was  so  frantic  that  his  hands 
beat  with  little  spasmodic  movements  against 
the  wall. 

He  did  not  see  Mrs.  Carter  at  all,  but  he  saw 
rather  the  movement  through  the  air  and  dark- 
ness of  the  house  of  something  that  would 
bring  down  upon  him  the  full  naked  force  of  the 
Terror  that  he  had  all  his  life  anticipated.  He 
had  always  known  that  the  awful  hour  would 
arrive  when  the  Terror  would  grip  him;  again 
and  again  he  had  seen  its  eyes,  felt  its  breath, 
heard  its  movements,  and  these  movements  had ' 


194       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

been  forewarnings  of  some  future  day.  That 
day  had  arrived. 

There  was  only  one  thing  that  he  could  do; 
his  Friend  alone  in  all  the  world  could  help 
him.  With  his  soul  dizzy  and  faint  from  fear, 
he  prayed  for  his  Friend;  had  he  been  less 
frightened  he  would  have  screamed  aloud  for 
him  to  come  and  help  him. 

The  boy's  breath  came  hot  into  his  throat 
and  stuck  there,  and  his  heart  beat  like  a  high, 
•unresting  hammer. 

Mrs.  Carter,  with  the  candle  raised  to  throw 
light  in  front  of  her,  moved  forward  very  cau- 
tiously and  softly.  She  passed  down  the  pas- 
sage, and  then  paused  very  near  to  the  boy. 
She  looked  at  the  keys,  and  stole  like  some 
heavy,  stealthy  animal  to  the  door  of  the  long 
drawing-room.  He  watched  her  as  she  tried 
one  key  after  another,  making  little  dissatisfied 
noises  as  they  refused  to  fit;  then  at  last  one 
turned  the  lock  and  she  pushed  back  the 
door. 

It  was  certainly  impossible  for  him,  in  the 
dim  world  of  his  mind,  to  realise  what  it  was 
that  she  intended  to  do,  but  he  knew,  through 
some  strange  channel  of  knowledge,  that  his 
mother  was  concerned  in  this,  and  that  some- 


'ENERY  195 

thing  more  than  the  immediate  peril  of  himself 
was  involved.  He  had  also,  lost  in  the  dim 
mazes  of  his  mind,  a  consciousness  that  there 
were  treasures  in  the  house,  and  that  his  moth- 
er was  placed  there  to  guard  them,  and  even 
that  he  himself  shared  her  duty. 

It  did  not  come  to  him  that  Mrs.  Carter  was 
in  pursuit  of  these  treasures,  but  he  did  realise 
that  her  presence  there  amongst  them  brought 
peril  to  his  mother.  Moved  then  by  some  des- 
perate urgency  which  had  at  its  heart  his  sense 
that  to  be  left  alone  in  the  black  passage  was 
worse  than  the  actual  lighted  vision  of  his 
Terror,  he  crept  with  trembling  knees  across 
the  passage  and  through  the  door. 

Inside  the  room  he  saw  that  she  had  laid  the 
candle  upon  the  piano,  and  was  bending  over 
a  drawer,  trying  again  to  fit  a  key.  He  stood 
in  the  doorway,  a  tiny  figure,  very,  very  cold, 
all  his  soul  in  his  silent  appeal  for  some  help. 
His  Friend  must  come.  He  was  somewhere 
there  in  the  house.  "Come!  Help  me!"  The 
candle  suddenly  flared  into  a  finger  of  light 
that  flung  the  room  into  vision.  Mrs.  Carter, 
startled,  raised  herself,  and  at  that  same  mo- 
ment Henry  gave  a  cry,  a  weak  little  trem- 
bling sound. 


196       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

She  turned  and  saw  the  boy;  as  their  eyes 
met  he  felt  the  Terror  rnshing  upon  him.  He 
flung  a  last  desperate  appeal  for  help,  staring 
at  her  as  though  his  eyes  would  never  let  her 
go,  and  she,  finding  him  so  unexpectedly,  could 
only  gape.  In  their  silent  gaze  at  one  another, 
in  the  glassy  stare  of  Mrs.  Carter  and  the 
trembling,  flickering  one  of  Henry  there  was 
more  than  any  ordinary  challenge  could  have 
conveyed.  Mrs.  Carter  must  have  felt  at  the 
first  immediate  confrontation  of  the  strange  lit- 
tle figure  that  her  feet  were  on  the  very  edge 
of  some  most  desperate  precipice.  The  long 
room  and  the  passages  beyond  must  have  quiv- 
ered. At  that  very  first  moment,  with  some 
stir,  some  hinted  approach,  Henry  called,  with 
the  desperate  summoning  of  all  his  ghostly 
world,  upon  his  gods.  They  came.  .  .  . 

In  her  eyes  he  saw  suddenly  something  else 
than  vague  terror.  He  saw  recognition.  He 
felt  himself  a  rushing,  heartening  comfort;  he 
knew  that  his  Friend  had  somehow  come,  that 
he  was  no  longer  alone. 

But  Mrs.  Carter's  eyes  were  staring  beyond 
him,  over  him,  into  the  black  passage.  Her 
eyes  seemed  to  grow  as  though  the  terror  in 
them  was  pushing  them  out  beyond  their  lids; 


'ENEEY  197 

her  breath,  came  in  sharp,  tearing  gasps.  The 
keys  with  a  clang  dropped  from  her  hand. 

*'0h,  God!  Oh,  God!"  she  whispered.  He 
did  not  turn  his  head  to  grasp  what  it  was  that 
she  saw  in  the  passage.  The  terror  had  been 
transferred  from  himself  to  her. 

The  colour  in  her  cheeks  went  out,  leaving 
her  as  though  her  face  were  suddenly  shadowed 
by  some  overhanging  shape. 

Her  eyes  never  moved  nor  faltered  from  the 
dark  into  whose  heart  she  gazed.  Then,  there 
was  a  strangled,  gasping  cry,  and  she  sank 
down,  first  onto  her  knees,  then  in  a  white  faint, 
her  eyes  still  staring,  lay  huddled  on  the  floor. 

Henry  felt  his  Friend's  hand  on  his  shoul- 
der. 

Meanwhile,  down  in  the  kitchen,  the  fire  had 
sunk  into  grey  ashes,  and  Mrs.  Slater  was  lying 
back  in  her  chair,  her  head  back,  snoring  thick- 
ly; an  empty  glass  had  tumbled  across  the 
table,  and  a  few  drops  from  it  had  dribbled 
over  on  to  the  tablecloth. 


CHAPTER 

BARB  ABA    FLINT 
I 

BARBARA  FLINT  was  a  little  girl,  aged 
seven,  who  lived  with  her  parents  at  IJo. 
36  March  Square.  Her  brother  and  sister,  Mas- 
ter Anthony  and  Miss  Misabel  Flint,  were  years 
and  years  older,  so  you  must  understand  that 
she  led  rather  a  solitary  life.  She  was  a  child 
with  very  pale  flaxen  hair,  very  pale  blue  eyes, 
very  pale  cheeks — she  looked  like  a  china  doll 
who  had  been  left  by  a  careless  mistress  out 
in  the  rain.  She  was  a  very  sensitive  child, 
cried  at  the  least  provocation,  very  affection- 
ate, too,  and  ready  to  imagine  that  people 
didn't  like  her. 

Mr.  Flint  was  a  stout,  elderly  gentleman, 
whose  favourite  pursuit  was  to  read  the  news- 
papers in  his  club,  and  to  inveigh  against  the 
Liberals.  He  was  pale  and  pasty,  and  suffered 

198 


BARBARA  FLINT  199 

from  indigestion.  Mrs.  Flint  was  tall,  thin 
and  severe,  and  a  great  helper  at  St.  Mat- 
thew's, the  church  round  the  corner.  She  gave 
up  all  her  time  to  church  work  and  the  care 
of  the  poor,  and  it  wasn't  her  fault  that  the 
poor  hated  her.  Between  the  Scylla  of  politics 
and  the  Charybdis  of  religion  there  was  very 
little  left  for  poor  Barbara ;  she  faded  away  un- 
der the  care  of  an  elderly  governess  who  suf- 
fered from  a  perfect  cascade  of  ill-fated  love 
affairs;  it  seemed  that  gentlemen  were  always 
"playing  with  her  feelings."  But  in  all  prob- 
ability a  too  vivid  imagination  led  her  astray 
in  this  matter;  at  any  rate,  she  cried  so  often 
during  Barbara's  lessons  that  the  title  of  the 
lesson-book,  "Reading  without  Tears,"  was 
sadly  belied.  It  might  be  expected  that,  under 
these  unfavourable  circumstances,  Barbara  was 
growing  into  a  depressed  and  melancholy  child- 
hood. 

Barbara,  happily,  was  saved  by  her  imagina- 
tion. Surely  nothing  quite  like  Barbara's  im- 
agination had  ever  been  seen  before,  because 
it  came  to  her,  outside  inheritance,  outside  en- 
vironment, outside  observation.  She  had  it  al- 
together, in  spite  of  Flints  past  and  present. 
But,  perhaps,  not  altogether  in  spite  of  March 


200       THE  GOLDEN  SCAKECROW 

Square.  It  would  be  difficult  to  say  how  deep- 
ly the  fountain,  the  almond  tree,  the  green,  flat 
shining  grass  had  stung  her  intuition ;  but  stung 
it  only,  not  created  it — the  thing  was  there  from 
the  beginning  of  all  time.  She  talked,  at  first 
to  nurses,  servants,  her  mother,  about  the 
things  that  she  knew;  about  her  Friend  who 
often  came  to  see  her,  who  was  there  so  many 
times — there  in  the  room  with  her  when  they 
couldn't  catch  a  glimpse  of  him;  about  the  days 
and  nights  when  she  was  away  anywhere,  up 
in  the  sky,  out  on  the  air,  deep  in  the  sea,  about 
all  the  other  experiences  that  she  remembered 
but  was  now  rapidly  losing  consciousness  of. 
She  talked,  at  first  easily,  naturally,  and  invit- 
ing, as  it  were,  return  confidences.  Then,  quite 
suddenly,  she  realised  that  she  simply  wasn't 
believed,  that  she  was  considered  a  wicked  lit- 
tle girl  "for  making  things  up  so,"  that  there 
was  no  hope  at  all  for  her  unless  she  aban- 
doned her  "lying  ways." 

The  shock  of  this  discovery  flung  her  straight 
back  upon  herself;  if  they  refused  to  believe 
these  things,  then  there  was  nothing  to  be  done. 
But  for  herself  their  incredulity  should  not  stop 
her.  She  became  a  very  quiet  little  girl — what 
her  nurse  called  "brooding."  This  incredulity 


BAEBAEA  FLINT  201 

of  theirs  drove  them  all  instantly  into  a  hostile 
camp,  and  the  affection  that  she  had  been  long- 
ing to  lavish  upon  them  must  now  be  reserved 
for  other,  and,  she  could  not  help  feeling,  wiser 
persons.  This  division  of  herself  from  the  im- 
mediate world  hurt  her  very  much.  From  a 
very  early  age,  indeed,  we  need  reassurance  as 
to  the  necessity  for  our  existence.  Barbara 
simply  did  not  seem  to  be  wanted. 

But  still  worse ;  now  that  her  belief  in  certain 
things  had  been  challenged,  she  herself  began 
to  question  them.  Was  it  true,  possibly,  when 
a  flaming  sunset  struck  a  sword  across  the 
Square  and  caught  the  fountain,  slashing  it 
into  a  million  glittering  fragments,  that  that 
was  all  that  occurred?  Such  a  thing  had  been 
for  Barbara  simply  a  door  into  her  earlier 
world.  See  the  fountain — well,  you  have  been 
tested;  you  are  still  simple  enough  to  go  back 
into  the  real  world.  But  was  Barbara  simple 
enough?  She  was  seven;  it  is  just  about  then 
that  we  begin,  under  the  guard  of  nurses  care- 
fully chosen  for  us  by  our  parents,  to  drop  our 
simplicity.  It  must,  of  course,  be  so,  or  the 
world  would  be  all  dreamers,  and  then  there 
would  be  no  commerce. 

Barbara  knew  nothing  of  commerce,  but  she 


202       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

did  know  that  she  was  unhappy,  that  her  dolls 
gave  her  no  happiness,  and  that  her  Friend 
did  not  come  now  so  often  to  see  her.  She  was, 
I  am  afraid,  in  character  a  "Hopper.'*  She 
must  be  affectionate,  she  must  demand  affec- 
tion of  others,  and  will  they  not  give  it  her, 
then  must  they  simulate  it.  The  tragedy  of  it 
all  was  perhaps,  that  Barbara  had  not  herself 
that  coloured  vitality  in  her  that  would  pre- 
>are  other  people  to  be  fond  of  her.  The 
world  is  divided  between  those  who  place  af- 
fection about,  now  here,  now  there,  and  those 
whose  souls  lie,  like  drawers,  unawares,  but 
ready  for  the  affection  to  be  laid  there. 

Barbara  could  not  "place"  it  about;  she 
had  neither  optimism  nor  a  sense  of  humour 
sufficient.  But  she  wanted  it — wanted  it  ter- 
ribly. If  she  were  not  to  be  allowed  to  indulge 
her  imagination,  then  must  she,  all  the  more, 
love  some  one  with  fervour:  the  two  things 
were  interdependent.  She  surveyed  her  world 
with  an  eye  to  this  possible  loving.  There  was 
her  governess,  who  had  been  with  her  for  a 
year  now,  tearful,  bony,  using  Barbara  as  a 
means  and  never  as  an  end.  Barbara  did  not 
love  her — how  could  she?  Moreover,  there 
were  other  physical  things:  the  lean,  shining 


BARBARA  FLINT  203 

marble  of  Miss  Letts 's  long  fingers,  the  dry- 
thinness  of  her  hair,  the  way  that  the  tip  of 
her  nose  would  be  suddenly  red,  and  then,  like 
a  blown-out  candle,  dull  white  again.  Fingers 
and  noses  are  not  the  only  agents  in  the  human 
affections,  but  they  have  most  certainly  some- 
thing to  do  with  them.  Moreover,  Miss  Letts 
was  too  busily  engaged  with  the  survey  of  her 
relations,  with  now  this  gentleman,  now  that, 
to  pay  much  attention  to  Barbara.  She  dis- 
missed her  as  "a  queer  little  thing."  There 
were  in  Miss  Letts 's  world  "queer  things" 
and  "things  not  queer."  The  division  was 
patent  to  anybody. 

Barbara's  father  and  mother  were  also  sur- 
veyed. Here  Barbara  was  baffled  by  the  deter- 
mination on  the  part  of  both  of  them  that  she 
should  talk,  should  think,  should  dream  about 
all  the  things  concerning  which  she  could  not 
talk,  think  nor  dream.  "How  to  grow  up  into 
a  nice  little  girl,"  "How  to  pray  to  God," 
"How  never  to  tell  lies,"  "How  to  keep  one's 
clothes  clean," — these  things  did  not  interest 
Barbara  in  the  least;  but  had  she  been  given 
love  with  them  she  might  have  paid  some  at- 

ition.  But  a  too  rigidly  defined  politics,  a 
too  ngidly  defined  religion  find  love  a  poor, 


204       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

loose,  sentimental  thing — very  rightly  so,  per- 
haps. Mrs.  Flint  was  afraid  that  Barbara  was 
a  "silly  little  girl." 

"I  hope,  Miss  Letts,  that  she  no  longer 
talks  about  her  silly  fancies." 

"She  has  said  nothing  to  me  in  that  respect 
for  a  considerable  period,  Mrs.  Flint." 

"All  very  young  children  have  fancies,  but 
such  things  are  dangerous  when  they  grow 
older." 

"I  agree  with  you." 

Nevertheless  the  fountain  continued  to  flash 
in  the  sun,  and  births,  deaths,  weddings,  love 
and  hate  continued  to  play  their  part  in  March 
Square. 

n 

BARBARA,  groping  about  in  the  desolation  of 
having  no  one  to  grope  with  her,  discovered 
that  her  Friend  came  now  less  frequently  to 
see  her.  She  was  even  beginning  to  wonder 
whether  he  had  ever  really  come  at  all.  She 
had  perhaps  imagined  him  just  as  on  occasion 
she  would  imagine  her  doll,  Jane,  the  Queen 
of  England,  or  her  afternoon  tea  the  most 
wonderful  meal,  with  sausages,  blackberry  jam 


BARBARA  FLINT  205 

and  chocolates.  Young  though,  she  was,  she 
was  able  to  realise  that  this  imagination  of 
hers  was  capable  de  tout,  and  that  every  one 
older  than  herself  said  that  it  was  wicked; 
therefore  was  her  Friend,  perhaps,  wicked 
also. 

And  yet,  if  the  dark  curtains  that  veiled  the 
nursery  windows  at  night,  if  the  glimmering 
shape  of  the  picture-frames,  if  the  square  black 
sides  of  the  dolls '  house  were  real,  real  also  was 
the  figure  of  her  Friend,  real  his  arousal  in 
her  of  all  the  memories  of  the  old  days  before 
she  was  Barbara  Flint  at  all — real,  too,  his 
love,  his  care,  his  protection;  as  real,  yes,  as 
Miss  Letts 's  bony  figure.  It  was  all  very  puz- 
zling. But  he  did  not  come  now  as  in  the  old 
days. 

Barbara  played  very  often  in  the  gardens  in 
the  middle  of  the  Square,  but  because  she  was 
a  timid  little  girl  she  did  not  make  many 
friends.  She  knew  many  of  the  other  children 
who  played  there,  and  sometimes  she  shared 
in  their  games ;  but  her  sensitive  feelings  were 
so  easily  hurt,  she  frequently  retired  in  tears. 
Every  day  on  going  into  the  garden  she  looked 
about  her,  hoping  that  she  would  find  before 
she  left  it  again  some  one  whom  it  would  be 


206       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

possible  to  worship.  She  tried  on  several  oc- 
casions to  erect  altars,  but  our  English  temper- 
ament is  against  public  display,  and  she  was 
misunderstood. 

Then,  quite  suddenly,  as  though  she  had 
sprung  out  of  the  fountain,  Mary  Adams  was 
there.  Mary  Adams  was  aged  nine,  and  her 
difference  from  Barbara  Flint  was  that,  where- 
as Barbara  craved  for  affection,  she  craved  for 
attention:  the  two  demands  can  be  easily  con- 
fused. Mary  Adams  was  the  only  child  of  an 
aged  philosopher,  Mr.  Adams,  who,  contrary 
to  all  that  philosophy  teaches,  had  married  a 
young  wife.  The  young  wife,  pleased  that 
Mary  was  so  unlike  her  father,  made  much  of 
her,  and  Mary  was  delighted  to  be  made  much 
of.  She  was  a  little  girl  with  flaxen  hair,  blue 
eyes,  and  a  fine  pink-and-white  colouring.  In 
a  few  years'  time  she  will  be  so  sure  of  the  at- 
tention that  her  appearance  is  winning  for  her 
that  she  will  make  no  effort  to  secure  adher- 
ents, but  just  now  she  is  not  sufficiently  confi- 
dent— she  must  take  trouble.  She  took  trouble 
with  Barbara. 

Sitting  neatly  upon  a  seat,  Mary  watched 
rude  little  boys  throw  sidelong  glances  in  her 
direction.  Her  long  black  legs  were  quivering 


BARBARA  FLINT  207 

with  the  perception  of  their  interest,  even 
though  her  eyes  were  haughtily  indifferent.  It 
was  then  that  Barbara,  with  Miss  Letts,  an  ab- 
sent-minded companion,  came  and  sat  by  her 
side.  Barbara  and  Mary  had  met  at  a  party 
. — not  quite  on  equal  terms,  because  nine  to 
seven  is  as1  sixty  to  thirty — but  they  had  played 
hide-and-seek  together,  and  had,  by  chance,  hid- 
den in  the  same  cupboard. 

The  little  boys  had  moved  away,  and  Mary 
Adams's  legs  dropped,  suddenly,  their  tension. 

"I'm  going  to  a  party  to-night,"  Mary  said, 
with  a  studied  indifference. 

Miss  Letts  knew  of  Mary's  parents,  and  that, 
socially,  they  were  "all  right" — a  little  more 
"all  right,"  were  we  to  be  honest,  than  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Flint.  She  said,  therefore: 

"Are  you,  dear?  That  will  be  nice  for 
you. ' ' 

Instantly  Barbara  was  trembling  with  ex- 
citement. She  knew  that  the  remark  had  been 
made  to  her  and  not  at  all  to  Miss  Letts.  Bar-, 
bara  entered  once  again,  and  instantly,  upon 
the  field  of  the  passions.  Here  she  was  fated 
by  her  temperament  to  be  in  all  cases  a  miser- 
able victim,  because  panic,  whether  she  were 
accepted  or  rejected  by  the  object  of  her  devo- 


208       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

tion,  reduced  her  to  incoherent  foolishness ;  she 
could  only  be  foolish  now,  and,  although  her 
heart  beat  like  a  leaping  animal  inside  her, 
allowed  Miss  Letts  to  carry  on  the  conversa- 
tion. 

But  Miss  Letts 's  wandering  eye  hurt  Mary's 
pride.  She  was  not  really  interested  in  her, 
and  once  Mary  had  come  to  that  conclusion 
about  any  one,  complete,  utter  oblivion  en- 
veloped them.  She  perceived,  however,  Bar- 
bara's agitation,  and  at  that,  flattered  and  ap- 
peased, she  was  amiable  again.  There  followed 
between  the  two  a  strangled  and  disconnected 
conversation. 

Mary  began: 

"I've  got  four  dolls  at  home." 

"Have  you?"  breathlessly  from  Barbara. 
By  such  slow  accuracies  as  these  are  we  con- 
veyed, all  our  poor  mortal  days,  from  realism 
to  romance,  and  with  a  shocking  precipitance 
are  we  afterwards  flung  back,  out  of  romance 
into  realism,  our  natural  home,  again. 

"Yes — four  dolls  I  have.  My  mother  will 
give  me  another  if  I  ask  her.  Would  your 
mother!" 

"Yes,"  said  Barbara,  untruthfully. 

"That's  my  governess,  Miss  Marsh,  there, 


BAEBAEA  FLINT  209 

with  the  green  hat,  that  is.  I've  had  her  two 
months." 

"Yes,"  said  Barbara,  gazing  with  adoring 
eyes. 

"She's  going  away  next  week.  There's  an- 
other coming.  I  can  do  sums,  can  you?" 

"Yes,"  again  from  Barbara. 

"I  can  do  up  to  twice-sixty- three.  I'm  nine. 
Miss  Marsh  says  I'm  clever." 

"I'm  seven,"  said  Barbara. 

"I  could  read  when  I  was  seven — long,  long 
words.  Can  you  read?" 

At  this  moment  there  arrived  the  green-hat- 
ted Miss  Marsh,  a  plump,  optimistic  person,  to 
whom  Miss  Letts  was  gloomily  patronising. 
Miss  Letts  always  distrusted  stoutness  in  an- 
other;, it  looked  like  deliberate  insult.  Mary 
Adams  was  conveyed  away;  Barbara  was  be- 
reft of  her  glory. 

But,  rather,  on  that  instant  that  Mary 
Adams  vanished  did  she  become  glorified.  Bar- 
bara had  been  too  absurdly  agitated  to  trans- 
form on  to  the  mirror  of  her  brain  Mary's  ap- 
pearance. In  all  the  dim-coloured  splendour 
of  flame  and  mist  was  Mary  now  enwrapped, 
with  every  step  that  Barbara  took  towards  her 
home  did  the  splendour  grow. 


210       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 


m 

THEN  followed  an  invitation  to  tea  from  Mary's 
mother.  Barbara,  preparing  for  the  event, 
suffered  her  hair  to  be  brushed,  choked  with 
strange  half-sweet,  half-terrible  suffocation 
that  comes  from  anticipated  glories :  half-sweet 
because  things  will,  at  their  worst,  be  wonder- 
ful; half -terrible  because  we  know  that  they 
will  not  be  so  good  as  we  hope. 

Barbara,  washed  paler  than  ever,  in  a  white 
frock  with  pink  bows,  was  conducted  by  Miss 
Letts.  She  choked  with  terror  in  the  strange 
hall,  where  she  was  received  with  great  splen- 
dour by  Mary.  The  schoolroom  was  large  and 
fine  and  bright,  finer  far  than  Barbara's  room, 
swamped  by  the  waters  of  religion  and  politics. 
Barbara  could  only  gulp  and  gulp,  and  feel 
still  at  her  throat  that  half-sweet,  half-terrible 
suffocation.  Within  her  little  body  her  heart, 
so  huge  and  violent,  was  pounding. 

"A  very  nice  room  indeed,"  said  Miss  Letts, 
more  friendly  now  to  the  optimist  because 
she  was  leaving  in  a  day  or  two,  and  could  not, 
therefore,  at  the  moment  be  considered  a  suc- 
cess. Her  failure  balanced  her  plumpness. 


BAEBAEA  FLINT  211 

Here,  at  any  rate,  was  the  beginning  of  a 
great  friendship  between  Barbara  Flint  and 
Mary  Adams.  The  character  of  Mary  Adams 
was  admittedly  a  difficult  one  to  explore;  her 
mother,  a  cloud  of  nurses  and  a  company  of 
governesses  had  been  baffled  completely  by  its 
dark  caverns  and  recesses.  One  clue,  beyond 
question,  was  selfishness;  but  this  quality,  by 
the  very  obviousness  of  it,  may  tempt  us  to 
believe  that  that  is  all.  It  may  account,  when 
we  are  displeased,  for  so  much.  It  accounted 
for  a  great  deal  with  Mary — but  not  all.  She 
had,  I  believe,  a  quite  genuine  affection  for 
Barbara,  nothing  very  disturbing,  that  could 
rival  the  question  as  to  whether  she  would  re- 
ceive a  second  helping  of  pudding  or  no,  or 
whether  she  looked  better  in  blue  or  pink. 
Nevertheless,  the  affection  was  there.  During 
several  months  she  considered  Barbara  more 
than  she  had  ever  considered  any  one  in  her 
life  before.  At  that  first  tea  party  she  was- 
aware,  perhaps,  that  Barbara's  proffered  de- 
votion was  for  complete  and  absolute  self- 
sacrifice,  something  that  her  vanity  would  not 
often  find  to  feed  it.  There  was,  too,  no  ques- 
tion of  comparison  between  them. 

Even  when  Barbara  grew  to  be  nine  she 


212       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

would  be  a  poor  thing  beside  the  lusty  self- 
confidence  of  Mary  Adams — and  this  was  quite 
as  it  should  be.  All  that  Barbara  wanted  was 
some  one  upon  whom  she  might  pour  her  de- 
votion, and  one  of  the  things  that  Mary  wanted 
was  some  one  who  would  spend  it  upon  her. 
But  there  stirred,  nevertheless,  some  breath  of 
emotion  across  that  stagnant  little  pool, 
Mary's  heart.  She  was  moved,  perhaps,  by 
pity  for  Barbara's  amazing  simplicities,  moved 
also  by  curiosity  as  to  how  far  Barbara's  de- 
votion to  her  would  go,  moved  even  by  some 
sense  of  distrust  of  her  own  self-satisfaction. 
She  did,  indeed,  admire  any  one  who  could 
realise,  as  completely  as  did  Barbara,  the 
greatness  of  Mary  Adams. 

It  may  seem  strange  to  us,  and  almost  terri- 
ble, that  a  small  child  of  seven  can  feel  any- 
thing as  devastating  as  this  passion  of  Bar- 
bara. But  Barbara  was  made  to  be  swept  by 
storms  stronger  than  she  could  control,  and 
Mary  Adams  was  the  first  storm  of  her  life. 
They  spent  now  a  great  deal  of  their  time  to- 
gether. Mrs.  Adams,  who  was  beginning  to 
find  Mary  more  than  she  could  control,  hailed 
the  gentle  Barbara  with  joy ;  she  welcomed  also 
perhaps  a  certain  note  of  rather  haughty 


BAEBAEA  FLINT  213 

protection  which  Mary  seemed  to  be  develop- 
ing. 

During  the  hours  when  Barbara  was  alone 
she  thought  of  the  many  things  that  she  would 
say  to  her  friend  when  they  met,  and  then  at 
the  meeting  could  say  nothing.  Mary  talked 
or  she  did  not  talk  according  to  her  mood,  but 
she  soon  made  it  very  plain  that  there  was 
only  one  way  of  looking  at  .everything  inside 
and  outside  the  earth,  and  that  was  Mary's 
way.  Barbara  had  no  affection,  but  a  certain 
blind  terror  for  God.  It  was  precisely  as 
though  some  one  were  standing  with  a  hammer 
behind  a  tree,  and  were  waiting  to  hit  you  on 
the  back  of  your  head  at  the  first  opportunity. 
But  God  was  not,  on  the  whole,  of  much  impor- 
tance; her  Friend  was  the  great  problem,  and 
before  many  days  were  passed  Mary  was  told 
all  about  him. 

"He  used  to  come  often  and  often.  He'd 
be  there  just  where  you  wanted  him — when  the 
light  was  out  or  anything.  And  he  was  nice." 
Barbara  sighed. 

Mary  stared  at  her,  seeming  in  the  first  full 
sweep  of  confidence,  to  be  almost  alarmed. 

"You  don't  mean ?"  She  stopped,  then 

cried,  "Why,  you  silly,  you  believe  in  ghosts!" 


214       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

"No,  I  don't,*'  said  Barbara,  not  far  from 
tears. 

"Yes,  you  do." 

"No,  I  don't." 

"Of  course  you  do,  you  silly." 

"No,  I  don't.    He— he's  real." 

"Well,"  Mary  said,  with  a  final  toss  of  the 
head,  "if  you  go  seeing  ghosts  like  that  you 
can't  have  me  for  your  friend,  Barbara  Flint 
— you  can  choose,  that's  all." 

Barbara  was  aghast.  Such  a  catastrophe 
had  never  been  contemplated.  Lose  Mary? 
Sooner  life  itself.  She  resolved,  sorrowfully, 
to  say  no  more  about  her  Friend.  But  here  oc- 
curred a  strange  thing.  It  was  as  though  Mary 
felt  that  over  this  one  matter  Barbara  had 
eluded  her ;  she  returned  to  it  again  and  again, 
always  with  contemptuous  but  inquisitive  allu- 
sion. 

"Did  he  come  last  night,  Barbara?" 

"No." 

"P'r'aps  he  did,  only  you  were  asleep." 

"No,  he  didn't." 

"You  don't  believe  he'll  come  ever  any  more, 
do  you?  Now  that  I've  said  he  isn't  there 
really?" 

"Yes,  I  do." 


BARBARA  FLINT  215 

"Very  well,  then,  I  won't  see  you  to-morrow 
— not  at  all — not  all  day — I  won't." 

These  crises  tore  Barbara's  spirit.  Seven 
is  not  an  age  that  can  reason  with  life's  diffi- 
culties, and  Barbara  had,  in  this  business,  no 
reasoning  powers  at  all.  She  would  die  for 
Mary;  she  could  not  deny  her  Friend.  What 
was  she  to  do?  And  yet — just  at  this  moment 
when,  of  all  others,  it  was  important  that  he 
should  come  to  her  and  confirm  his  reality — he 
made  no  sign.  Not  only  did  he  make  no  sign, 
but  he  seemed  to  withdraw,  silently  and  surely, 
all  his  supports.  Barbara  discovered  that  the 
company  of  Mary  Adams  did  in  very  truth 
make  everything  that  was  not  sure  and  certain 
absurd  and  impossible.  There  was  visible  no 
longer,  as  there  had  been  before,  that  country 
wherein  anything  was  possible,  where  wonder- 
ful things  had  occurred  and  where  wonderful 
things  would  surely  occur  again. 

"You're  pretending,"  said  Mary  Adam& 
sharply  when  Barbara  ventured  some  possibly 
extravagant  version  of  some  ordinary  occur- 
rence, or  suggested  that  events,  rich  and  won- 
derful, had  occurred  during  the  night.  "Non- 
sense," said  Mary  sharply. 

She  said  "nonsense"  as  though  it  were  the 


216       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECBOW 

very  foundation  of  her  creed  of  life — as,  in- 
deed, to  the  end  of  her  days,  it  was.  What, 
then,  was  Barbara  to  do?  Her  friend  would 
not  come,  although  passionately  she  begged  and 
begged  and  begged  that  he  would.  Mary  Adams 
was  there  every  day,  sharp,  and  shining,  and 
resolved,  demanding  the  whole  of  Barbara 
Flint,  body  and  soul — nothing  was  to  be  kept 
from  her,  nothing.  What  was  Barbara  Flint 
to  do? 

She  denied  her  Friend,  denied  that  earlier 
world,  denied  her  dreams  and  her  hopes.  She 
cried  a  good  deal,  was  very  lonely  in  the  dark. 
Mary  Adams,  as  was  her  way,  having  won  her 
victory,  passed  on  to  win  another. 


rv 


MABY  began,  now,  to  find  Barbara  rather  tire- 
some. Having  forced  her  to  renounce  her  gods, 
she  now  despised  her  for  so  easy  a  renuncia- 
tion. Every  day  did  she  force  Barbara  through 
her  act  of  denial,  and  the  Inquisition  of  Spain 
held,  in  all  its  records,  nothing  more  cruel. 

"Did  he  come  last  night?" 

"No." 

"He'll  never  come  again,  will  he?" 


BARBARA  FLINT  217 

"No." 

"Wasn't  it  silly  of  you  to  make  up  stories 
like  that?" 

"Oh,  Mary — yes." 

"There  aren't  ghosts,  nor  fairies,  nor  giants, 
nor  wizards,  nor  Santa  Glaus?" 

"No;  but,  Mary,  p'r'aps " 

"No;  there  aren't.     Say  there  aren't." 

"There  isn't." 

Poor  Barbara,  even  as  she  concluded  this 
ceremony,  clutching  her  doll  close  to  her  to 
give  her  comfort,  could  not  refrain  from  a  hur- 
ried glance  over  her  shoulder.  He  might 

be But  upon  Mary  this  all  began  soon 

enough  to  pall.  She  liked  some  opposition. 
She  liked  to  defeat  people  and  trample  on  them 
and  then  be  gracious.  Barbara  was  a  poor  lit- 
tle thing.  Moreover,  Barbara's  standard  of 
morality  and  righteousness  annoyed  her.  Bar- 
bara seemed  to  have  no  idea  that  there  was 
anything  in  this  confused  world  of  ours  except 
wrong  and  right.  No  dialectician,  argue  he 
ever  so  stoutly,  could  have  persuaded  Barbara 
that  there  was  such  a  colour  in  the  world's 
paint-box  as  grey.  "It's  bad  to  tell  lies.  It's 
bad  to  steal.  It's  bad  to  put  your  tongue  out. 
It's  good  to  be  kind  to  poor  people.  It's  good 


218       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

to  say  'No*  when  you  want  more  pudding  but 
mustn't  have  it."  Barbara  was  no  prig.  She 
did  not  care  the  least  little  thing  about  these 
things,  nor  did  she  ever  mention  them,  but  let 
a  question  of  conduct  arise,  then  was  Bar- 
bara's way  plain  and  clear.  She  did  not  al- 
ways take  it,  but  there  it  was.  With  Mary, 
how  very  different !  She  had,  I  am  afraid,  no 
sense  of  right  and  wrong  at  all,  but  only  a  coolly 
ironical  perception  of  the  things  that  her  eld- 
ers disliked  and  permitted.  Very  foolish  and 
absurd,  these  elders.  We  have  always  before 
our  eyes  some  generation  that  provokes  our 
irony,  the  one  before  us,  the  one  behind  us, 
our  own  perhaps;  for  Mary  Adams  it  would 
always  be  any  generation  that  was  not  her  own. 
Her  business  in  life  was  to  avoid  unpleasant- 
ness, to  extract  the  honey  from  every  flower, 
but  above  all  to  be  admired,  praised,  pre- 
ferred. 

At  first  with  her  pleasure  at  Barbara's  ado- 
ration she  had  found,  within  herself,  a  truly 
alarming  desire  to  be  "good."  It  might, 
after  all,  be  rather  amusing  to  be,  in  strict 
reality,  all  the  fine  things  that  Barbara  con- 
sidered her.  She  endeavoured  for  a  week  or 
two  to  adjust  herself  to  this  point  of  view,  to 


BAEBARA  FLINT  219 

consider,  however  slightly,  whether  it  were 
right  or  wrong  to  do  something  that  she  par- 
ticularly wished  to  do. 

But  she  found  it  very  tiresome.  The  effort 
spoilt  her  temper,  and  no  one  seemed  to  no- 
tice any  change.  She  might  as  well  be  bad  as 
good  were  there  no  one  present  to'  perceive  the 
difference.  She  gave  it  up,  and,  from  that  mo- 
ment found  that  she  suffered  Barbara  less  glad- 
ly than  before.  Meanwhile,  in  Barbara  also 
strange  forces  had  been  at  work.  She  found 
that  her  imagination  (making  up  stories)  sim- 
ply, in  spite  of  all  the  Mary  Adamses  in  the 
world,  refused  to  stop.  Still  would  the  almond 
tree  and  the  fountain,  the  gold  dust  on  the 
roofs  of  the  houses  when  the  sun  was  setting, 
the  racing  hurry  of  rain  drops  down  the  win- 
dow-pane, the  funny  old  woman  with  the  red 
shawl  who  brought  plants  round  in  a  wheel- 
barrow, start  her  story  telling. 

Still  could  she  not  hold  herself  from  fancy- 
ing, at  times,  that  her  doll  Jane  was  a  queen, 
and  that  Miss  Letts  could  make  " spells"  by 
the  mere  crook  of  her  bony  fingers.  Worst  of 
all,  still  she  must  think  of  her  Friend,  tell  her- 
self with  an  ache  that  he  would  never  come  back 
again,  feel,  sometimes,  that  she  would  give  up 


220       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

Mary  and  all  the  rest  of  the  world  if  he  would 
tonly  be  beside  her  bed,  as  he  used  to  be,  talking 
,to  her,  holding  her  hand.  During  these  days, 
had  there  been  any  one  to  observe  her,  she  was 
a  pathetic  little  figure,  with  her  thin  legs  like 
black  sticks,  her  saucer  eyes  that  so  readily 
filled  with  tears,  her  eager,  half-apprehensive 
expression,  the  passionate  clutch  of  the  doll  to 
her  heart,  and  it  is,  after  all,  a  painful  busi- 
ness, this  adoration — no  human  soul  can  live 
up  to  the  heights  of  it,  and,  what  is  more,  no 
human  soul  ought  to. 

As  Mary  grew  tired  of  Barbara  she  allowed 
to  slip  from  her  many  of  the  virtuous  graces 
that  had  hitherto,  for  Barbara's  benefit, 
adorned  her.  She  lost  her  temper,  was  cruel 
simply  for  the  pleasure  that  Barbara's  ill- re- 
strained agitation  yielded  her,  but,  even  be- 
yond this,  squandered  recklessly  her  reputa- 
tion for  virtue.  Twice,  before  Barbara's  very 
eyes,  she  told  lies,  and  told  them,  too,  with  a 
real  mastery  of  the  craft — long  practice  and  a 
natural  disposition  had  brought  her  very  near 
perfection.  Barbara,  her  heart  beating  wildly, 
refused  to  understand;  Mary  could  not  be  so. 
She  held  Jane  to  her  breast  more  tightly  than 
before.  And  the  denials  continued ;  twice  a  day 


BABBAEA  FLINT  221 

now  they  were  extorted  from  her — with  every 
denial  the  ghost  of  her  Friend  stole  more  deep- 
ly into  the  mist.  He  was  gone;  he  was  gone; 
and  what  was  left? 

Very  soon,  and  with  unexpected  suddenness, 
the  crisis  came. 


UPON  a  day  Barbara  accompanied  her  mother 
to  tea  with  Mrs.  Adams.  The  ladies  remained 
downstairs  in  the  dull  splendour  of  the  draw- 
ing-room ;  Mary  and  Barbara  were  delivered  to 
Miss  Fortescue,  the  most  recent  guardian  of 
Mary's  life  and  prospects. 

"She's  simply  awful.  You  needn't  mind  a 
word  she  says,"  Mary  instructed  her  friend, 
and  prepared  then  to  behave  accordingly. 
They  had  tea,  and  Mary  did  as  she  pleased. 
Miss  Fortescue  protested,  scolded,  was  weak 
when  she  should  have  been  strong,  and  said 
often,  "Now,  Mary,  there's  a  dear." 

Barbara,  the  faint  colour  coming  and  going 
in  her  cheeks,  watched.  She  watched  Mary 
now  with  quite  a  fresh  intention.  She  had  be- 
gun her  voyage  of  discovery:  what  was  in 
Mary's  head,  what  would  she  do  next?  What 


222       THE  GOLDEN  SCABECROW 

Mary  did  next  was  to  propose,  after  tea,  that 
they  should  travel  through  other  parts  of  the 
house. 

"We'll  be  back  in  a  moment,"  Mary  flung 
over  her  head  to  Miss  Fortescue.  They  pro- 
ceeded then  through  passages,  peering  into 
dark  rooms,  looking  behind  curtains,  Barbara 
following  behind  her  friend,  who  seemed  to  be 
moved  by  a  rather  aimless  intention  of  find- 
ing something  to  do  that  she  shouldn't.  They 
finally  arrived  at  Mrs.  Adams's  private  and 
particular  sitting-room,  a  place  that  may  be 
said,  in  the  main,  to  stand  as  a  protest  against 
the  rule  of  the  ancient  philosopher,  being  all 
pink  and  flimsy  and  fragile  with  precious  vases 
and  two  post-impressionist  pictures  (a  green 
apple  tree  one,  the  other  a  brown  woman), 
and  lace  cushions  and  blue  bowls  with  rose 
leaves  in  them.  Barbara  had  never  been  into 
this  room  before,  nor  had  she  ever  in  all  her 
seven  years  seen  anything  so  lovely. 

"Mother  says  I'm  never  to  come  in  here,*' 
announced  Mary.  "But  I  do — lots.  Isn't  it 
pretty?" 

"P'r'aps  we  oughtn't—       '  began  Barbara, 

"Oh,  yes,  we  ought,"  answered  Mary  scorn- 
fully. "Always  you  and  your  'oughtn't.'  " 


BARBARA  FLINT  223 

She  turned,  and  her  shoulders  brushed  a 
low  bracket  that  was  close  to  the  door.  A 
large  Nankin  vase  was  at  her  feet,  scattered 
into  a  thousand  pieces.  Even  Mary's  proud 
indifference  was  stirred  by  this  catastrophe, 
and  she  was  down  on  her  knees  in  an  instant, 
trying  to  pick  up  the  pieces.  Barbara  stared, 
her  eyes  wide  with  horror. 

"Oh,  Mary,"  she  gasped. 

"You  might  help  instead  of  just  standing 
there!" 

Then  the  door  opened  and,  like  the  aveng- 
ing gods  from  Olympus,  in  came  the  two  ladies, 
eagerly,  with  smiles. 

"Now  I  must  just  show  you,"  began  Mrs. 
Adams.  Then  the  catastrophe  was  discovered 
— a  moment's  silence,  then  a  cry  from  the  poor 
lady:  "Oh,  my  vase!  It  was  priceless!"  (It 
was  not,  but  no  matter.) 

About  Barbara  the  air  clung  so  thick  with 
catastrophe  that  it  was  from  a  very  long  way 
indeed  that  she  heard  Mary's  voice: 

"Barbara  didn't  mean " 

"Did  you  do  this,  Barbara?"  her  mother 
turned  round  upon  her. 

"You  know,  Mary,  I've  told  you  a  thousand 
times  that  you're  not  to  come  in  here!"  this 


224       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

from  Mrs.  Adams,  who  was  obviously  very  an- 
gry indeed. 

Mary  was  on  her  feet  now  and,  as  she  looked 
across  at  Barbara,  there  was  in  her  glance  a 
strange  look,  ironical,  amused,  inquisitive,  even 
affectionate.  "Well,  mother,  I  knew  we 
mustn't.  But  Barbara  wanted  to  look  so  I  said 
we'd  just  peep,  but  that  we  weren't  to  touch 
anything,  and  then  Barbara  couldn't  help  it, 
really;  her  shoulder  just  brushed  the 
shelf—  '  and  still  as  she  looked  there  was  in 
her  eyes  that  strange  irony:  "Well,  now  you 
see  me  as  I  am — I'm  bored  by  all  this  pre- 
tending. It's  gone  on  long  enough.  Are  you 
going  to  give  me  away?" 

But  Barbara  could  do  nothing.  Her  whole 
world  was  there,  like  the  Nankin  vase,  smashed 
about  her  feet,  as  it  never,  never  would  be 
again. 

"So  you  did  this,  Barbara!"  Mrs.  Flint 
said. 

"Yes,"  said  Barbara.  Then  she  began  to 
cry. 

VI 

AT  home  she  was  sent  to  bed.  Her  mother  read 
her  a  chapter  of  the  Gospel  according  to  St. 


BAEBABA  FLINT  225 

Matthew,  and  then  left  her ;  she  lay  there,  sick 
with  crying,  her  eyes  stiff  and  red,  wonder- 
ing how  she  would  ever  get  through  the  weeks 
and  weeks  of  life  that  remained  to  her.  She 
thought :  "I'll  never  love  any  one  again.  Mary 
took  my  Friend  away — and  then  she  wasn't 
there  herself.  There  isn't  anybody." 

Then  it  suddenly  occurred  to  her  that  she 
need  never  be  put  through  the  agony  of  her 
denials  again,  that  she  could  believe  what  she 
liked,  make  up  stories. 

Her  Friend  would,  of  course,  never  come  to 
see  her  any  more,  but  at  least  now  she  would 
be  able  to  think  about  him.  She  would  be 
allowed  to  remember.  Her  brain  was  drowsy, 
her  eyes  half  closed.  Through  the  humming  air 
something  was  coming ;  the  dark  curtains  were 
parted,  the  light  of  the  late  afternoon  sun  was 
faint  yellow  upon  the  opposite  wall — there  was 
a  little  breeze.  Drowsily,  drowsily,  her  droop- 
ing eyes  felt  the  light,  the  stir  of  the  air,  the 
sense  that  some  one  was  in  the  room. 

She  looked  up;  she  gave  a  cry!  He  had 
come  back!  He  had  come  back  after  all! 


CHAPTER  VIH 


SARAH   TREFUSIS 


SARAH  TREFUSIS  lived,  with  her  mother, 
in  the  smallest  house  in  March  Square,  a 
really  tiny  house,  like  a  box,  squeezed  breath- 
lessly between  two  fat  buildings,  but  looking, 
with  its  white  paint  and  green  doors,  smarter 
than  either  of  them.  Lady  Charlotte  Trefusis, 
Sarah's  mother,  was  elegant,  penniless  and  a 
widow;  Captain  B.  Trefusis,  her  husband,  had 
led  the  merriest  of  lives  until  a  game  of  polo 
carried  him  reluctantly  from  a  delightful  world 
and  forced  Lady  Charlotte  to  consider  the  prob- 
lem of  having  a  good  time  alone  on  nothing  at 
all  But  it  may  be  said  that,  on  the  whole,  she 
succeeded.  She  was  the  best-dressed  widow 
in  London,  and  went  everywhere,  but  the  little 
house  in  March  Square  was  the  scene  of  a  most 
strenuous  campaign,  every  day  presenting  its 

226 


SARAH  TBEFUSIS  227 

defeat  or  victory,  and  every  minute  of  the  day 
threatening  overwhelming  disaster  if  some- 
thing were  not  done  immediately.  Lady  Char- 
lotte had  the  smallest  feet  and  hands  outside 
China,  a  pile  of  golden  hair  above  the  face  of 
a  pink-and-white  doll.  Staring  from  this  face, 
however,  were  two  of  the  loveliest,  most  un- 
scrupulous of  eyes,  and  those  eyes  did  more 
for  Lady  Charlotte's  precarious  income  than 
any  other  of  her  resources.  She  wore  her  ex- 
pensive clothes  quite  beautifully,  and  gave  love- 
ly little  lunches  and  dinners;  no  really  merry 
house-party  was  complete  without  her. 

Sarah  was  her  only  child,  and,  although  at 
the  time  of  which  I  am  writing  she  was  not 
yet  nine  years  of  age,  there  was  no  one  in 
London  better  suited  to  the  adventurous  and 
perilous  existence  that  Fate  had  selected  for 
her.  Sarah  was  black  as  ink — that  is,  she  had 
coal  black  hair,  coal  black  eyes,  and  wonderful 
black  eyelashes.  Her  eyelashes  were  her  only 
beautiful  feature,  but  she  was,  nevertheless,  a~ 
most  remarkable  looking  child.  "If  ever  a 
child's  possessed  of  the  devil,  my  dear  Char- 
lotte," said  Captain  James  Trent  to  her 
mother,  "it's  your  precious  daughter — she  is 
the  devil,  I  believe. " 


228       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

"Well,  she  needs  to  be,"  said  her  mother, 
"considering  the  life  that's  in  store  for  her. 
We're  very  good  friends,  she  and  I,  thank 
you." 

They  were.  They  understood  one  another 
to  perfection.  Lady  Charlotte  was  as  hard  as 
nails,  and  Sarah  was  harder.  Sarah  had  never 
been  known  to  cry.  She  had  bitten  the  fingers 
of  one  of  her  nurses  through  to  the  bone,  and 
had  stuck  a  needle  into  the  cheek  of  another 
whilst  she  slept,  and  had  watched,  with  a  curi- 
ous abstracted  gaze,  the  punishment  dealt  out 
to  her,  as  though  it  had  nothing  to  do  with 
her  at  all.  She  never  lost  her  temper,  and 
one  of  the  most  terrible  things  about  her  was 
her  absolute  calm.  She  was  utterly  fearless, 
went  to  the  dentist  without  a  tremor,  and,  at 
the  age  of  six,  fell  downstairs,  broke  her  leg, 
and  so  lay  until  help  arrived  without  a  cry. 
She  bullied  and  hurt  anything  or  anybody  that 
came  her  way,  but  carried  out  her  plans  always 
with  the  same  deliberate  abstraction  as  though 
she  were  obeying  somebody's  orders.  She 
never  nourished  revenge  or  resentment,  and 
it  seemed  to  be  her  sense  of  humour  (rather 
than  any  fierce  or  hostile  feeling)  that  was 
tickled  when  she  hurt  any  one. 


SARAH  TBEFUSIS  229 

She  was  a  child,  apparently  without  imagi- 
nation, but  displayed,  at  a  very  early  period, 
a  strangely  sharpened  perception  of  what  her 
nurse  called  ''the  uncanny."  She  frightened 
even  her  mother  by  the  expression  that  her 
face  often  wore  of  attention  to  something  or 
somebody  outside  her  companion's  perception. 
,  "A  broomstick  is  what  she'll  be  flying  away 
on  one  of  these  nights,  you  mark  my  word, ' '  a 
nurse  declared.  "Little  devil,  she  is,  neither 
more  nor  less.  It  isn't  decent  the  way  she  sits 
on  the  floor  looking  right  through  the  wall  into 
the  next  room,  as  you  might  say.  Yes,  and 
knows  who's  coming  up  the  stairs  long  before 
she's  seen  'em.  No  place  for  a  decent  Chris- 
tian woman,  and  so  I  told  her  mother  this  very 
morning."  It  was,  of  course,  quite  impossible 
to  find  a  nurse  to  stay  with  Sarah,  and,  when 
she  arrived  at  the  age  of  seven,  nurses  were 
dismissed,  and  she  either  looked- after  herself 
or  was  tended  by  an  abandoned  French  maid  of 
her  mother's,  who  stayed  with  Lady  Charlotte, 
like  a  wicked,  familiar  spirit,  for  a  great  num- 
ber of  years  on  a  strange  basis  of  confidante, 
fellow-plunderer,  and  sympathetic  adventurer. 
This  French  maid,  whose  name  was,  appropri- 
ately enough,  Hortense,  had  a  real  affection  for 


230       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECROW 

Sarah  "because  she  was  the  weeckedest  child 
of  'er  age  she  ever  see."  There  was  nothing 
of  which  Sarah,  from  the  very  earliest  age,  did 
not  seem  aware.  Her  mother's  gentlemen 
friends  she  valued  according  to  their  status  in 
the  house,  and,  as  they  "fell  off"  or  "came 
on,"  so  was  her  manner  indifferent  or  pleas- 
ant. For  Hortense,  she  had  a  real  respect, 
but  even  that  improper  and  brazen  spirit 
quailed  at  times  before  her  cynical  and  elfish 
regard.  To  say  of  a  child  that  there  is  some- 
thing "unearthly"  about  it  is,  as  a  rule,  to  pay 
a  compliment  to  ethereal  blue  and  gold.  There 
was  nothing  ethereal  about  Sarah,  and  yet  she 
was  unearthly  enough.  Squatting  on  the  floor, 
her  legs  tucked  under  her,  her  head  thrust 
forward,  her  large  black  eyes  staring  at  the 
wall,  her  black  hair  almost  alive  in  the  shin- 
ing intensity  of  its  colours,  she  had  in  her  at- 
titude the  lithe  poise  of  some  animal  ready 
to  spring,  waiting  for  its  exact  opportunity. 

When  her  mother,  in  a  temper,  struck  her, 
she  would  push  her  hair  back  from  her  face 
with  a  sharp  movement  of  her  hand  and  then 
would  watch  broodingly  and  cynically  for  the 
next  move.  "You  hit  me  again,"  she  seemed 
to  say, ' '  and  you  will  make  a  fool  of  yourself. ' ' 


SAEAH  TEEFUSIS  231 

She  was  aware,  of  course,  of  a  thousand  in- 
fluences in  the  house  of  which  her  mother  and 
Hortense  had  never  the  slightest  conception. 
From  the  cosy  security  of  her  cradle  she  had 
watched  the  friendly  spirit  who  had  accom- 
panied (with  hostile  irritation)  her  entrance 
into  this  world.  His  shadow  had,  for  a  long 
period,  darkened  her  nursery,  but  she  repelled, 
with  absolute  assurance,  His  kindly  advances. 

1  'I'm  not  frightened.  I  don't,  in  the  least, 
want  things  made  comfortable  for  me.  I  can. 
get  along  very  nicely,  indeed,  without  you. 
You're  full  of  sentiment  and  gush — things  that 
I  detest — and  it  won't  be  the  least  use  in  the 
world  for  you  to  ask  me  to  be  good,  and  tender, 
and  all  the  rest  of  it.  I'm  not  like  your  other 
babies." 

He  must  have  known,  of  course,  that  she  was 
not,  but,  nevertheless,  He  stayed.  "I  under- 
stand perfectly,"  He  assured  her.  "But,  never- 
theless, I  don't  give  you  up.  You  may  be,  for 
all  you  know,  more  interesting  to  me  than  all 
the  others  put  together.  And  remember  this — 
every  time  you  do  anything  at  all  kind  or 
thoughtful,  every  time  you  think  of  any  one  or 
care  for  them,  every  time  you  use  your  influ- 
ence for  good  in  any  way,  my  power  over  you 


232       THE  GOLDEN  SCAKECBOW 

is  a  little  stronger,  I  shall  be  a  little  closer  to 
you,  your  escape  will  be  a  little  harder. ' ' 

"Oh,  you  needn't  flatter  yourself,"  she  an- 
swered Him.  "There's  precious  little  danger 
of  my  self-sacrifice  or  love  for  others.  That's 
not  going  to  be  my  attitude  to  life  at  all.  You'd 
better  not  waste  your  time  over  me." 

She  had  not,  she  might  triumphantly  re- 
flect, during  these  eight  years,  given  Him  many 
chances,  and  yet  He  was  still  there.  She  hated 
the  thought  of  His  patience,  and  somewhere 
deep  within  herself  she  dreaded  the  faint,  dim 
beat  of  some  response  that,  like  a  warning  bell 
across  a  misty  sea,  cautioned  her.  "You  may 
think  you're  safe  from  Him,  but  He'll  catch  you 
yet." 

"He  shan't,"  she  replied.  "I'm  stronger 
than  He  is. ' ' 


THIS  must  sound,  in  so  prosaic  a  summary  of 
it,  fantastic,  but  nothing  could  be  said  to  be 
fantastic  about  Sarah.  She  was,  for  one  thing, 
quite  the  least  troublesome  of  children.  She 
could  be  relied  upon,  at  any  time,  to  find  amuse- 
ment for  herself.  She  was  full  of  resources, 


SAEAH  TBEFUSIS  233 

but  what  these  resources  exactly  were  it  would 
be  difficult  to  say.  She  would  sit  for  hours 
alone,  staring  in  front  of  her.  She  never 
played  with  toys — she  did  not  draw  or  read — 
but  she  was  never  dull,  and  always  had  the 
most  perfect  of  appetites.  She  had  never,  from 
the  day  of  her  birth,  known  an  hour's  illness. 

It  was,  however,  in  the  company  of  other 
children  that  she  was  most  charactjeristic.  The 
nurses  in  the  Square  quite  frankly  hated  her, 
but  most  of  the  mothers  had  a  very  real  re- 
gard for  Lady  Charlotte's  smart  little  lunches; 
moreover,  it  was  impossible  to  detect  Sarah's 
guilt  in  any  positive  fashion.  It  was  not 
enough  for  the  nurses  to  assure  their  mis- 
tresses that  from  the  instant  that  the  child 
entered  the  gardens  all  the  other  children  were 
out  of  temper,  rebellious,  and  finally  unman- 
ageable. 

"Nonsense,  Janet,  you  imagine  things.  She 
seems  a  very  nice  little  girl." 

"Well,  ma'am,  all  I  can  say  is,  I  won't  care 
to  be  answerable  for  Master  Eonald's  be- 
haviour when  she  does  come  along,  that's  all. 
It 's  beyond  belief  the  effect  she  'as  upon  'im. ' ' 

The  strangest  thing  of  all  was  that  Sarah 
herself  liked  the  company  of  other  children. 


234       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

She  went  every  morning  into  the  gardens  (with 
Hortense)  and  watched  them  at  their  play.  She 
would  sit,  with  her  hands  folded  quietly  on  her 
lap,  her  large  black  eyes  watching,  watching, 
watching.  It  was  odd,  indeed,  how,  instantly, 
all  the  children  in  the  garden  were  aware  of 
her  entrance.  She,  on  her  part,  would  appear 
to  regard  none  of  them,  and  yet  would  see 
them  all.  Perched  on  her  seat  she  surveyed 
the  gardens  always  with  the  same  gaze  of  ab- 
stracted interest,  watching  the  clear,  decent 
paths  across  whose  grey  background  at  the 
period  of  this  episode,  the  October  leaves, 
golden,  flaming,  dun,  gorgeous  and  shrivelled, 
fell  through  the  still  air,  whirled,  and  with  a 
little  sigh  of  regret,  one  might  fancy,  sank  and 
lay  dead.  The  October  colours,  a  faint  haze  of 
smoky  mist,  the  pale  blue  of  the  distant  sky, 
the  brown  moist  earth,  were  gentle,  mild, 
washed  with  the  fading  year's  regretful  tears; 
the  cries  of  the  children,  the  rhythmic  splash 
of  the  fountain  throbbed  behind  the  colours  like 
some  hidden  orchestra  behind  the  curtain  at 
the  play;  the  statues  in  the  garden,  like  frag- 
ments of  the  white  bolster  clouds  that  swung 
so  lazily  from  tree  to  tree,  had  no  meaning  in 
that  misty  air  beyond  the  background  that 


SAEAH  TEEFUSIS  235 

they  helped  to  fill.  The  year,  thus  idly,  with  so 
pleasant  a  melancholy,  was  slipping  into  decay. 

Sarah  would  watch.  Then,  without  a  word, 
she  would  slip  from  her  seat,  and,  walking  sol- 
emnly, rather  haughtily,  would  join  some  group 
of  children.  Day  after  day  the  §ame  children 
came  to  the  gardens,  and  they  all  of  them  knew 
Sarah  by  now.  Hortense,  in  her  turn  also,  sit- 
ting, stiff  and  superior,  would  watch.  She 
would  see  Sarah's  pleasant  approach,  her  smile, 
her  amiability.  Very  soon,  however,  there 
would  be  trouble — some  child  would  cry  out; 
there  would  be  blows;  nurses  would  run  for- 
ward, scoldings,  protests,  captives  led  away 
weeping  .  .  .  and  then  Sarah  would  return 
slowly  to  her  seat,  her  gaze  aloof,  cynical,  re- 
mote. She  would  carefully  explain  to  Hortense 
the  reason  of  the  uproar.  She  had  done  noth- 
ing— her  conscience  was  clear.  These  silly  lit- 
tle idiots.  She  would  break  into  French,  culled 
elaborately  from  Hortense,  would  end  disdain- 
fully— "mais,  voila" — very  old  for  her  age. 

Hortense  was  vicious,  selfish,  crude  in  her 
pursuit  of  pleasure,  entirely  unscrupulous,  but, 
as  the  days  passed,  she  was,  in  spite  of  herself, 
conscious  of  some  half-acknowledged,  half-de- 
cided terror  of  Sarah's  possibilities. 


236       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

The  child  was  eight  years  old.  She  was  capa- 
ble of  anything ;  in  her  remote  avoidance  of  any 
passion,  any  regret,  any  anticipated  pleasure, 
any  spontaneity,  she  was  inhuman.  Hortense 
thought  that  she  detected  in  the  chit's  mother 
something  of  her  own  fear. 


in 

THERE  used  to  come  to  the  gardens  a  little  fat 
red-faced  girl  called  Mary  Kitson,  the  child  of 
simple  and  ingenuous  parents  (her  father  was 
a  writer  of  stories  of  adventure  for  boys'  pa- 
pers) ;  she  was  herself  simple-minded,  lethar- 
gic, unadventurous,  and  happily  stupid.  Walk- 
ing one  day  slowly  with  Hortense  down  one 
of  the  garden  paths,  Sarah  saw  Mary  Kitson 
engaged  in  talking  to  two  dolls,  seated  on 
a  bench  with  them,  patting  their  clothes, 
very  happy,  her  nurse  busy  over  a  novel- 
ette. 

Sarah  stopped. 

"I'll  sit  here,"  she  said,  walked  across  to 
the  bench  and  sat  down.  Mary  looked  up  from 
her  dolls,  and  then,  nervously  and  self-con- 
sciously, went  back  to  her  play.  Sarah  stared 
straight  before  her. 


SAEAH  TEEFUSIS  237 

Hortense  amiably  endeavoured  to  draw  the 
nurse  into  conversation. 

"You  'ave  'ere  ze  fine  gardens,"  she  said. 
"It  calls  to  mind  my  own  Paris.  Ah,  the  gar- 
dens in  Paris!" 

But  the  nurse  had  been  taught  to  dis- 
trust all  foreigners,  and  her  views  of  Paris 
were  coloured  by  her  reading.  She  admired 
Hortense 's  clothes,  but  distrusted  her  ad- 
vances. 

She  buried  herself  even  more  deeply  in  the 
paper.  Poor  Mary  Kitson,  alas!  found  that, 
in  some  undefinable  manner,  the  glory  had  de- 
parted from  her  dolls.  Adrian  and  Emily 
were,  of  a  sudden,  glassy  and  lumpy  abstrac- 
tions of  sawdust  and  china.  Very  timidly  she 
raised  her  large,  stupid  eyes  and  regarded 
Sarah.  Sarah  returned  the  glance  and  smiled. 
Then  she  came  close  to  Mary. 

"It's  better  under  there,"  she  said,  point- 
ing to  the  shade  of  a  friendly  tree. 

"May  I?"  Mary  said  to  her  nurse  with  a 
frightened  gasp. 

"Well,  now,  don't  you  go  far,"  said  the 
nurse,  with  a  fierce  look  at  Hortense. 

"You  like  where  you  are?"  asked  Hortense, 
smiling  more  than  ever.  "You  'ave  a  good 


238       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

place?'*  Slowly  the  nurse  yielded.  The  novel- 
ette was  laid  aside. 

Impossible  to  say  what  occurred  under  the 
tree.  Now  and  again  a  rustle  of  wind  would 
send  the  colours  from  the  trees  to  short 
branches  loaded  with  leaves  of  red  gold,  shiv- 
ering through  the  air ;  a  chequered,  blazing  can- 
opy covered  the  ground. 

Mary  Kitson  had,  it  appeared,  very  little 
to  say.  She  sat  some  way  from  Sarah,  clutch- 
ing Adrian  and  Emily  tightly  to  her  breast, 
and  always  her  large,  startled  eyes  were  on 
Sarah's  face.  She  did  not  move  to  drive  the 
leaves  from  her  dress;  her  heart  beat  very 
fast,  her  cheeks  were  very  red. 

Sarah  talked  a  little,  but  not  very  much.  She 
asked  questions  about  Mary's  home  and  her 
parents,  and  Mary  answered  these  interroga- 
tions in  monosyllabic  gasps.  It  appeared  that 
Mary  had  a  kitten,  and  that  this  kitten  was  a 
central  fact  of  Mary's  existence.  The  kitten 
was  called  Alice. 

"Alice  is  a  silly  name  for  a  kitten.  I 
shouldn't  call  a  kitten  Alice,"  said  Sarah,  and 
Mary  started  as  though  in  some  strange,  sin- 
ister fashion  she  were  instantly  aware  that 
Alice's  life  and  safety  were  threatened. 


SAEAH  TEEFUSIS  239 

From  that  morning  began  a  strange  ac- 
quaintance that  certainly  could  not  be  called  a 
friendship.  There  could  be  no  question  at  all 
that  Mary  was  terrified  of  Sarah;  there  could 
also  be  no  question  that  Mary  was  Sarah's 
obedient  slave.  The  cynical  Hortense,  prepared 
as  she  was  for  anything  strange  and  unex- 
pected in  Sarah's  actions,  was,  nevertheless, 
puzzled  now. 

One  afternoon,  wet  and  dismal,  the  two  of 
them  sitting  in  a  little  box  of  a  room  in  the 
little  box  of  a  house,  Sarah  huddled  in  a  chair, 
her  eyes  staring  in  front  of  her,  Hortense  sew- 
ing, her  white,  bony  fingers  moving  sharply  like 
knives,  the  maid  asked  a  question: 

"What  do  you  see — Sar-ah — in  that  infant?" 

"What  infant1?"  asked  Sarah,  without  mov- 
ing her  eyes. 

"That  Mary  with  whom  now  you  always 
are. ' ' 

"We  play  games  together,"  said  Sarah. 

"You  do  not.  You  may  be  playing  a  game 
— she  does  nothing.  She  is  terrified — out  of 
her  life." 

"She  is  very  silly.  It's  funny  how  silly  she 
is.  I  like  her  to  be  frightened." 

Mary's  nurse  told  Mary's  mother  that,  in 


240       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

her  opinion,  Sarah  was  not  a  nice  child.  But 
Sarah  had  been  invited  to  tea  at  the  confused, 
simple  abode  of  the  Kitson  family,  and  had 
behaved  perfectly. 

"I  think  you  must  be  wrong,  nurse,"  said 
Mrs.  Kitson.  "She  seems  a  very  nice  little 
girl.  Mary  needs  companions.  It's  good  for 
her  to  be  taken  out  of  herself.'* 

Had  Mrs.  Kitson  been  of  a  less  confused 
mind,  however,  had  she  had  more  time  for  the 
proper  observation  of  her  daughter,  she  would 
have  noticed  her  daughter's  pale  cheeks,  her 
daughter's  fits  of  crying,  her  daughter's  si- 
lences. Even  as  the  bird  is  fascinated  by  the 
snake,  so  was  Mary  Kitson  fascinated  by  Sarah 
Trefusis. 

"You  are  torturing  that  infant,"  said  Hor- 
tense,  and  Sarah  smiled. 

IV 

MABY  was  by  no  means  the  first  of  Sarah's  vic- 
tims. There  had  been  many  others.  Utterly 
aloof,  herself,  from  all  emotions  of  panic  or 
terror,  it  had,  from  the  very  earliest  age,  in- 
terested her  to  see  those  passions  at  work  in 
others.  Cruelty  for  cruelty's  sake  had  no  in- 


SARAH  TEEFUSIS  241 

terest  for  her  at  all ;  to  pull  the  wings  from  flies, 
to  tie  kettles  to  the  tails  of  agitated  puppies,  to 
throw  stones  at  cats,  did  not,  in  the  least,  amuse 
her.  She  had  once  put  a  cat  in  the  fire,  but  only 
because  she  had  seen  it  play  with  a  terrified 
mouse.  That  had  affronted  her  sense  of  jus- 
tice. But  she  was  gravely  and  quite  dispas- 
sionately interested  in  the  terror  of  Mary  Kit- 
son.  In  later  life  a  bull  fight  was  to  appear 
to  her  a  tiresome  affair,  but  the  domination  of 
one  human  being  over  another,  absorbing. 
She  had,  too,  at  the  very  earliest  age,  that  con- 
viction that  it  was  pleasant  to  combat  all  sen- 
timent, all  appeals  to  be  "good,"  all  soft  emo- 
tions of  pity,  anything  that  could  suggest  that 
Eight  was  of  more  power  than  Might. 

It  was  as  though  she  said,  "You  may  think 
that  even  now  you  will  get  me.  I  tell  you  I'm 
a  rebel  from  the  beginning;  you'll  never  catch 
me  showing  affection  or  sympathy.  If  you  do 
you  may  do  your  worst." 

Beyond  all  things,  her  anxiety  was  that,  sud- 
denly, in  spite  of  herself,  she  would  do  some- 
thing "soft,"  some  weak  kindness.  Her  power 
over  Mary  Kitson  reassured  her. 

The  fascination  of  this  power  very  soon  be- 
came to  her  an  overwhehning  interest.  Play- 


242       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

ing  with  Mary  Kitson's  mind  was  as  absorbing 
to  Sarah  as  chess  to  an  older  enthusiast;  her 
discoveries  promised  her  a  life  full  of  enter- 
tainment, if,  with  her  fellow-mortals,  she  was 
able,  so  easily,  "to  do  things,"  what  a  time 
she  would  always  have.  She  discovered,  very 
soon,  that  Mary  Kitson  was,  by  nature,  truthful 
and  obedient,  that  she  had  a  great  fear  of  God, 
and  that  she  loved  her  parents.  Here  was  fine 
material  to  work  upon.  She  began  by  insist- 
ing on  little  lies. 

"Say  our  clocks  were  all  wrong,  and  you 
couldn't  know  what  the  time  was." 

"Oh,  but " 

"Yes,  say  it." 

"Please,  Sarah." 

"Say  it.  Otherwise  I'll  be  punished  too. 
Mind,  if  you  don't  say  it,  I  shall  know." 

There  was  the  horrible  threat  that  effected 
so  much.  Mary  began  soon  to  believe  that 
Sarah  was  never  absent  from  her,  that  she 
attended  her,  invisibly,  her  little  dark  face  peer- 
ing over  Mary's  shoulder,  and  when  Mary  was 
in  bed  at  night,  the  lights  out,  and  only  shad- 
ows on  the  walls,  Sarah  was  certainly  there, 
her  mocking  eyes  on  Mary's  face,  her  voice 
whispering  things  in  Mary's  ears. 


SARAH  TREFUSIS  243 

Sarah,  Mary  very  soon  discovered,  believed 
in  nothing,  and  knew  everything.  This  horrihlo 
oomhination,  naturally,  affected  Mary,  who  be- 
lieved in  everything  and  knew  nothing. 

"Why  should  we  obey  our  mothers!"  said 
Sarah.  "We're  as  good  as  they  are." 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Mary,  in  a  voice  shocked  to  a 
strangled  whisper.  Nevertheless,  she  began, 
a  little,  to  despise  her  confused  parents.  There 
came  a  day  when  Mary  told  a  very  large  lie 
indeed;  she  said  that  she  had  brushed  her 
teeth  when  she  had  not,  and  she  told  this  lie 
quite  unprompted  by  Sarah.  She  was  more 
and  more  miserable  as  the  days  passed. 

No  one  knew  exactly  the  things  that  the  two 
little  girls  did  when  they  were  alone  on  an 
afternoon  in  Sarah's  room.  Sarah  sent  Hor- 
tense  about  her  business,  and  then  set  herself 
to  the  subdual  of  Mary's  mind  and  character. 
There  would  be  moments  like  this,  Sarah  would 
turn  off  the  electric  light,  and  the  room  would 
be  lit  only  by  the  dim  shining  of  the  evening 
sky. 

"Now,  Mary,  you  go  over  to  that  corner- 
that  dark  one — and  wait  there  till  I  tell  you  to 
come  out.  I'll  go  outside  the  room,  and  then 
you'll  see  what  will  happen." 


244       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECEOW 

"Oh,  no,  Sarah,  I  don't  want  to." 

"Why  not,  yon  silly  baby?" 

"I— I  don't  want  to." 

"Well,  it  will  be  much  worse  for  you  if  you 
don't." 

"I  want  to  go  home." 

"You  can  after  you  have  done  that." 

"I  want  to  go  home  now." 

"Go  into  the  corner  first." 

Sarah  would  leave  the  room  and  Mary  would 
stand  with  her  face  to  the  wall,  a  trembling 
prey  to  a  thousand  terrors.  The  light  would 
quiver  and  shake,  steps  would  tread  the  floor 
and  cease,  there  would  be  a  breath  in  her  ears, 
a  wind  above  her  head.  She  would  try  to  pray, 
but  could  remember  no  words.  Sarah  would 
lead  her  forth,  shaking  from  head  to  foot. 

"You  little  silly.    I  was  only  playing." 

Once,  and  this  hurried  the  climax  of  the  epi- 
sode, Mary  attempted  rebellion. 

"I  want  to  go  home,  Sarah." 

"Well,  you  can't.  You've  got  to  hear  the 
end  of  the  story  first. ' ' 

"I  don't  like  the  story.  It's  a  horrid  story. 
I'm  going  home." 

"You'd  better  not." 

"Yes,  I  will,  and  I  won't  come  again,  and  I 


SAEAH  TEEFUSIS  245 

won't  see  you  again.  I  hate  you.  I  won't.  I 
won't." 

Mary,  as  she  very  often  did,  began  to  cry. 
Sarah's  lips  curled  with  scorn. 

"All  right,  you  can.  You'll  never  see  Alice 
again  if  you  do." 

"Alice?" 

"Yes,  she'll  be  drowned,  and  you'll  have  the 
toothache,  and  I'll  come  in  the  middle  of  the 
night  and  wake  you." 

"I — I  don't  care.  I'm  go-going  home.  I'll 
t-t-ell  m-other." 

"Tell  her.  But  look  out  afterwards,  that's 
all." 

Mary  remained,  but  Sarah  regarded  the  re- 
bellion as  ominous.  She  thought  that  the  time 
had  come  to  put  Mary's  submission  really  to 
the  test. 


THE  climax  of  the  affair  was  in  this  manner. 
Upon  an  afternoon  when  the  rain  was  beating 
furiously  upon  the  window-panes  and  the  wind 
struggling  up  and  down  the  chimney,  Sarah  and 
Mary  played  together  in  Sarah's  room;  the 
play  consisted  of  Mary  shutting  her  eyes  and 


pretending  she  was  in  a  dark  wood,  whilst 
Sarah  was  the  tiger  who  might  at  any  moment 
spring  upon  her  and  devour  her,  who  would,  in 
any  case,  pinch  her  legs  with  a  sudden  thrust 
which  would  drive  all  the  blood  out  of  Mary's 
face  and  make  her  "as  white  as  the  moon." 

This  game  ended,  Sarah's  black  eyes  moved 
about  for  a  fresh  diversion;  her  gaze  rested 
upon  Mary,  and  Mary  whispered  that  she 
would  like  to  go  home. 

"Yes.  You  can,"  said  Sarah,  staring  at 
her,  "if  you  will  do  something  when  you  get 
there." 

"What?"  said  Mary,  her  heart  beating  like 
a  heavy  and  jumping  hammer. 

"There's  something  I  want.  You've  got  to 
bring  it  me." 

Mary  said  nothing,  only  her  wide  eyes  filled 
with  tears. 

"There's  something  in  your  mother's  draw- 
ing-room. You  know  in  that  little  table  with 
the  glass  top  where  there  are  the  little  gold 
boxes  with  the  silver  crosses  and  things. 
There's  a  ring  there — a  gold  one  with  a  red 
stone — very  pretty.  I  want  it." 

Mary  drew  a  long,  deep  breath.  Her  fat  legs 
in  the  tight,  black  stockings  were  shaking. 


SAEAH  TBEFUSIS  247 

"You  can  go  in  when  no  one  sees.  The  table 
isn't  locked,  I  know,  because  I  opened  it  once. 
You  can  get  and  bring  it  to  me  to-morrow  in 
the  garden." 

"Oh,"  Mary  whispered,  "that  would  be 
stealing. ' ' 

"Of  course  it  wouldn't.  Nobody  wants  the 
old  ring.  No  one  ever  looks  at  it.  It's  just 
for  fun." 

"No,"  said  Mary,  "I  mustn't." 

"Oh,  yes,  you  must.  You'll  be  very  sorry 
if  you  don't.  Dreadful  things  will  happen. 
Alice " 

Mary  cried  softly,  choking  and  spluttering 
and  rubbing  her  eyes  with  the  back  of  her 
hand. 

"Well,  you'd  better  go  now.  I'll  be  in  the 
garden  with  Hortense  to-morrow.  You  know, 
the  same  place.  You'd  better  have  it,  that's 
all.  And  don't  go  on  crying,  or  your  mother 
will  think  I  made  you.  What's  there  to  cry 
about?  No  one  will  eat  you." 

"It's  stealing." 

"I  dare  say  it  belongs  to  you,  and,  anyway, 
it  will  when  your  mother  dies,  so  what  does  it 
matter  ?  You  are  a  baby ! ' ' 

After  Mary's  departure  Sarah  sat  for  a  long 


248       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

while  alone  in  her  nursery.  She  thought  to 
herself:  "Mary  will  be  going  home  now  and 
she'll  be  snuffling  to  herself  all  the  way  back, 
and  she  won't  tell  the  nurse  anything,  I  know 
that.  Now  she's  in  the  hall.  She's  upstairs 
now,  having  her  things  taken  off.  She's 
stopped  crying,  but  her  eyes  and  nose  are  red. 
She  looks  very  ugly.  She's  gone  to  find  Alice. 
She  thinks  something  has  happened  to  her. 
She  begins  to  cry  again  when  she  sees  her,  and 
she  begins  to  talk  to  her  about  it.  Fancy  talk- 
ing to  a  cat.  ..." 

The  room  was  swallowed  in  darkness,  and 
when  Hortense  came  in  and  found  Sarah  sit- 
ting alone  there,  she  thought  to  herself  that,  in 
spite  of  the  profits  that  she  secured  from  her 
mistress  she  would  find  another  situation.  She 
did  not  speak  to  Sarah,  and  Sarah  did  not 
speak  to  her. 

Once,  during  the  night,  Sarah  woke  up;  she 
sat  up  in  bed  and  stared  into  the  darkness. 
Then  she  smiled  to  herself.  As  she  lay  down 
again  she  thought: 

"Now  I  know  that  she  will  bring  it." 

The  next  day  was  very  fine,  and  in  the  glit- 
tering garden  by  the  fountain,  Sarah  sat  with 
Hortense,  and  waited.  Soon  Mary  and  her 


SARAH  TEEFUSIS  249 

nurse  appeared.  Sarah,  took  Mary  by  the  hand 
and  they  went  away  down  the  leaf-strewn  path. 

"Well?"  said  Sarah. 

Mary  quite  silently  felt  in  her  pocket  at  the 
back  of  her  short,  green  frock,  produced  the 
ring,  gave  it  to  Sarah,  and,  still  without  a  word, 
turned  back  down  the  path  and  walked  to  her 
nurse.  She  stood  there,  clutching  a  doll  in 
her  hand,  stared  in  front  of  her,  and  said  noth- 
ing. Sarah  looked  at  the  ring,  smiled,  and  put 
it  into  her  pocket. 

At  that  instant  the  climax  of  the  whole  affair 
struck,  like  a  blow  from  some  one  unseen,  upon 
Sarah's  consciousness.  She  should  have  been 
triumphant.  She  was  not.  Her  one  thought  as 
she  looked  at  the  ring  was  that  she  wished 
Mary  had  not  taken  it.  She  had  a  strange  feel- 
ing as  though  Mary,  soft  and  heavy  and  fat, 
were  hanging  round  her  neck.  She  had  "got" 
Mary  for  ever.  She  was  suddenly  conscious 
that  she  despised  Mary,  and  had  lost  all  inter- 
est in  her.  She  didn't  want  the  ring,  nor  did 
she  ever  wish  to  see  Mary  again. 

She  gazed  about  the  garden,  shrugged  her 
thin,  little,  bony  shoulders  as  though  she  were 
fifty  at  least,  and  felt  tired  and  dull,  as  on  the 
day  after  a  party.  She  stood  and  looked  at 


250       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

Mary  and  her  nurse;  when  she  saw  them  walk 
away  she  did  not  move,  but  stayed  there,  star- 
ing after  them.  She  was  greatly  disappointed ; 
she  did  not  feel  any  pleasure  at  having  forced 
Mary  to  obey  her,  but  would  have  liked  to  have 
smacked  and  bitten  her,  could  these  violent  ac- 
tions have  driven  her  into  speech.  In  some 
undetermined  way  Mary's  silence  had  beaten 
Sarah.  Mary  was  a  stupid,  silly  little  girl,  and 
Sarah  despised  and  scorned  her,  but,  somehow, 
that  was  not  enough ;  from  all  of  this,  it  simply 
remained  that  Sarah  would  like  now  to  forget 
her,  and  could  not.  What  did  the  silly  little 
thing  mean  by  looking  like  that?  "She'll  go 
and  hug  her  Alice  and  cry  over  it."  If  only 
she  had  cried  in  front  of  Sarah  that  would  have 
been  something. 

Two  days  later  Lady  Charlotte  was  explain- 
ing to  Sarah  that  so  acute  a  financial  crisis 
had  arrived  "as  likely  as  not  we  shan't  have  a 
roof  over  our  heads  in  a  day  or  two. ' ' 

"We'll  take  an  organ  and  a  monkey,"  said 
Sarah. 

"At  any  rate,"  Lady  Charlotte  said,  "when 
you  grow  up  you'll  be  used  to  anything." 

Mrs.  Kitson,  untidy,  in  dishevelled  clothing, 
and  great  distress,  was  shown  in. 


SARAH  TEEFUSIS  251 


"Dear  Lady  Charlotte,  I  must  apologise 
this  absurd  hour — but  I — we — very  unhappy 
about  poor  Mary.  We  can't  think  what's  the 
matter  with  her.  She 's  not  slept  for  two  nights 
— in  a  high  fever,  and  cries  and  cries.  The 
Doctor — Dr.  Williamson — really  clever — says 
she's  unhappy  about  something.  We  thought 
— scarlet  fever — no  spots — can't  think — per- 
haps your  little  girl." 

"Poor  Mrs.  Kitson.  How  tiresome  for  you. 
Do  sit  down.  Perhaps  Sarah " 

Sarah  shook  her  head. 

"She  didn't  say  she'd  a  headache  in  the  gar- 
den the  other  day." 

Mrs.  Kitson  gazed  appealingly  at  the  little 
black  figure  in  front  of  her. 

"Do  try  and  remember,  dear.  Perhaps  she 
told  you  something." 

"Nothing,"  said  Sarah. 

"She  cries  and  cries,"  said  Mrs.  Kitson, 
about  whose  person  little  white  strings  and 
tapes  seemed  to  be  continually  appearing  and 
disappearing. 

"Perhaps  she's  eaten  something?"  suggested 
Lady  Charlotte. 

When  Mrs.  Kitson  had  departed,  Lady  Char- 
lotte turned  to  Sarah. 


252       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

"What  have  you  done  to  the  poor  child?" 
she  said. 

"Nothing,"  said  Sarah.  "I  never  want  to 
see  her  again." 

"Then  you  have  done  something?"  said 
Lady  Charlotte. 

"She's  always  crying,"  said  Sarah,  "and 
she  calls  her  kitten  Alice, ' '  as  though  that  were 
explanation  sufficient. 

The  strange  truth  remains,  however,  that  the 
night  that  followed  this  conversation  was  the 
first  unpleasant  one  that  Sarah  had  ever  spent ; 
she  remained  awake  during  a  great  part  of  it. 
It  was  as  though  the  hours  that  she  had  spent 
on  that  other  afternoon,  compelling,  from  her 
own  dark  room,  Mary's  will,  had  attached 
Mary  to  her.  Mary  was  there  with  her  now, 
in  her  bedroom.  Mary,  red-nosed,  sniffing,  her 
eyes  wide  and  staring. 

"I  want  to  go  home." 

1 '  Silly  little  thing,  > '  thought  Sarah.  ' '  I  wish 
I'd  never  played  with  her." 

In  the  morning  Sarah  was  tired  and  white- 
faced.  She  would  speak  to  no  one.  After 
luncheon  she  found  her  hat  and  coat  for  her- 
self, let  herself  out  of  the  house,  and  walked 
to  Mrs.  Kitson  's,  and  was  shown  into  the  wide, 


SAEAH  TEEFUSIS  253 

untidy  drawing-room,  where  books  and  flowers 
and  papers  had  a  lost  and  strayed  air  as 
though  a  violent  wind  had  blown  through  the 
place  and  disturbed  everything. 

Mrs.  Kitson  came  in. 

"You,  dear?"  she  said. 

Sarah  looked  at  the  room  and  then  at  Mrs. 
Kitson.  Her  eyes  said:  "What  a  place! 
What  a  woman !  What  a  fool ! ' ' 

' 'Yes,  I've  come  to  explain  about  Mary." 

" About  Mary?" 

"Yes.  It's  my  fault  that  she's  ill.  I  took  a 
ring  out  of  that  little  table  there — the  gold  ring 
with  the  red  stone — and  I  made  her  promise 
not  to  tell.  It's  because  she  thinks  she  ought 
to  tell  that  she's  ill." 

"You  took  it?  You  stole  it?"  Before  Mrs. 
Kitson 's  simple  mind  an  awful  picture  was  now 
revealed.  Here,  in  this  little  girl,  whom  she 
had  preferred  as  a  companion  for  her  beloved 
Mary,  was  a  thief,  a  liar,  and  one,  as  she  could 
instantly  perceive,  without  shame. 

"You  stole  it?" 

1 '  Yes ;  here  it  is. ' '  Sarah  laid  the  ring  on  the 
table. 

Mrs.  Kitson  gazed  at  her  with  horror,  dis- 
may, and  even  fear. 


254       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECEOW 

"Why?  Why?  Don 't  you  know  how  wrong 
it  is  to  take  things  that  don't  belong  to  you?" 

*  *  Oh,  all  that ! ' '  said  Sarah,  waving  her  hand 
scornfully.  "I  don't  want  the  silly  thing,  and 
I  don't  suppose  I'd  have  kept  it,  anyhow.  I 
don't  know  why  I've  told  you,"  she  added. 
"But  I  just  don't  want  to  be  bothered  with 
Mary  any  more." 

"Indeed,  you  won't  be,  you  wicked  girl,"  said 
Mrs.  Kitson.  "To  think  that  I — my  grand- 
father's— I'd  never  missed  it.  And  you 
haven't  even  said  you're  sorry." 

"I'm  not,"  said  Sarah  quietly.  "If  Mary 
wasn't  so  tiresome  and  silly  those  sort  of  things 
wouldn't  happen.  She  makes  me 

Mrs.  Kitson 's  horror  deprived  her  of  all 
speech,  so  Sarah,  after  one  more  glance  of 
amused  cynicism  about  the  room,  retired. 

As  she  crossed  the  Square  she  knew,  with 
happy  relief,  that  she  was  free  of  Mary,  that 
she  need  never  bother  about  her  again.  Would 
all  the  people  whom  she  compelled  to  obey  her 
hang  round  her  with  all  their  stupidities  after- 
wards? If  so,  life  was  not  going  to  be  so  en- 
tertaining as  she  had  hoped.  In  her  dark  little 
brain  already  was  the  perception  of  the  trouble 
that  good  and  stupid  souls  can  cause  to  bold 


SAKAH  TEEFUSIS  255 

and  reckless  ones.  She  would  never  bother 
with  any  one  so  feeble  as  Mary  again,  but, 
unless  she  did,  how  was  she  ever  to  have  any 
fun  again? 

Then  as  she  climbed  the  stairs  to  her  room, 
she  was  aware  of  something  else. 

"I've  caught  you,  after  all.  You  have  been 
soft.  YouVe  yielded  to  your  better  nature. 
Try  as  you  may  you  can't  get  right  away  from 
it.  Now  you'll  have  to  reckon  with  me  more 
than  ever.  You  see  you're  not  stronger  than  I 
am." 

Before  she  opened  the  door  of  her  room  she 
knew  that  she  would  find  Him  there,  tri- 
umphant. 

With  a  gesture  of  impatient  irritation  she 
pushed  the  door  open. 


CHAPTER  IX 


YOUNG  JOHN   SCAELETT 


THAT  fatal  September — the  September 
that  was  to  see  young  John  take  his 
adventurous  way  to  his  first  private  school — 
surely,  steadily  approached. 

Mrs.  Scarlett,  an  emotional  and  sentimental 
little  woman,  vibrating  and  taut  like  a  tele- 
graph wire,  told  herself  repeatedly  that  she 
would  make  no  sign.  The  preparations  pro- 
ceeded, the  date — September  23rd — was  con- 
stantly evoked,  a  dreadful  ghost,  by  the  care- 
less, light-hearted  family.  Mr.  Scarlett  made 
no  sign. 

From  the  hour  of  John's  birth — nearly  ten 
years  ago — Mrs.  Scarlett  had  never  known  a 
day  when  she  had  not  been  compelled  to  con- 
trol her  sentimental  affections.  From  the  first 
John  had  been  an  adorable  baby,  from  the  first 

256 


YOUNG  JOHN  SCAELETT         257 

he  had  followed  his  father  in  the  rejection  of 
all  sentiment  as  un-English,  and  even  if  larger 
questions  are  involved,  unpatriotic,  but  also 
from  the  first  he  had  hinted,  in  surprising, 
furtive,  agitating  moments,  at  poetry,  imagina- 
tion, hidden,  romantic  secrets.  Tom,  May, 
Clare,  the  older  children,  had  never  been  known 
to  hint  at  anything — hints  were  not  at  all  in 
their  line,  and  of  imagination  they  had  not, 
between  them,  enough  to  fill  a  silver  thimble— * 
they  were  good,  sturdy,  honest  children,  with 
healthy  stomachs  and  an  excellent  determina- 
tion to  do  exactly  the  things  that  their  class 
and  generation  were  bent  upon  doing.  Mrs. 
Scarlett  was  fond  of  them,  of  course,  and  be- 
cause she  was  a  sentimental  woman  she  was 
sometimes  quite  needlessly  emotional  about 
them,  but  John — no.  John  was  of  another 
world. 

The  other  children  felt,  beyond  question,  this 
difference.  They  deferred  to  John  about  every- 
thing and  regarded  him  as  leader  of  the  family, 
and  in  their  deference  there  was  more  than  sim- 
ply a  recognition  of  his  sturdy  independence. 
Even  John's  father,  Mr.  Reginald  Scarlett,  a 
K.C.,  and  a  man  of  a  most  decisive  and  em- 
phatic bearing,  felt  John's  difference. 


258       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

John's  appearance  was  un engaging  rather 
than  handsome — a  snub  nose,  grey  eyes,  rather 
large  ears,  a  square,  stocky  body  and  short, 
stout  legs.  He  was  certainly  the  most  inde- 
pendent small  boy  in  England,  and  very  obsti- 
nate; when  any  proposal  that  seemed  on  the 
face  of  it  absurd  was  made  to  him,  he  shut  up 
like  a  box.  His  mouth  would  close,  his  eyes 
disappear,  all  light  and  colour  would  die  from 
his  face,  and  it  was  as  though  he  said:  "Well, 
if  you  are  stupid  enough  to  persist  in  this  thing 
you  can  compel  me,  of  course — you  are  physi- 
cally stronger  than  I — but  you  will  only  get  me 
like  this  quite  dead  and  useless,  and  a  lot  of 
good  may  it  do  you!" 

There  were  times,  of  course,  when  he  could 
be  most  engagingly  pleasant.  He  was  court- 
eous, on  occasion,  with  all  the  beautiful  man- 
ners that,  we  are  told,  are  yielding  so  sadly 
before  the  spread  of  education  and  the  speed 
of  motor-cars — you  never  could  foretell  the 
guest  that  he  would  prefer,  and  it  was  nothing 
to  him  that  here  was  an  aunt,  an  uncle,  or  a 
grandfather  who  must  be  placated,  and  there 
an  uninvited,  undesired  caller  who  mattered 
nothing  at  all.  Mr.  Scarlett's  father  he  of- 
fended mortally  by  expressing,  in  front  of  him, 


YOUNG  JOHN  SCARLETT         259 

dislike  for  hair  that  grew  in  bushy  profusion 
out  of  that  old  gentleman's  ears. 

"But  you  could  cut  it  off,"  he  argued,  in  a 
voice  thick  with  surprised  disgust.  His  grand- 
father, who  was  a  baronet,  and  very  wealthy, 
predicted  a  dismal  career  for  his  grandchild. 

All  the  family  realised  quite  definitely  that 
nothing  could  be  done  with  John.  It  was  for- 
tunate, indeed,  that  he  was,  on  the  whole,  of  a 
happy  and  friendly  disposition.  He  liked  the 
world  and  things  that  he  found  in  it.  He  liked 
games,  and  food,  and  adventure — he  liked  quite 
tolerably  his  family — he  liked  immensely  the 
prospect  of  going  to  school. 

There  were  other  things — strange,  uncertain 
things — that  lay  like  the  dim,  uncertain  pattern 
of  some  tapestry  in  the  back  of  his  mind.  He 
gave  them,  as  the  months  passed,  less  and  less 
heed.  Only  sometimes  when  he  was  asleep.  .  .  . 

Meanwhile,  his  mother,  with  the  heroism 
worthy  of  Boadicea,  that  great  and  savage  war- 
rior, kept  his  impulses  of  devotion,  of  sacrifice, 
of  adoration,  in  her  heart.  John  had  no  need 
of  them ;  very  long  ago,  Reginald  Scarlett,  then 
no  K.C.,  with  all  the  K.C.  manner,  had  told 
her  that  he  did  not  need  them  either.  She  gave 
her  dinner  parties,  her  receptions,  her  political 


260       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECEOW 

gatherings — tremulous  and  smiling  she  faced  a 
world  that  thought  her  a  wise,  capable  little 
woman,  who  would  see  her  husband  a  judge  and 
peer  one  of  these  days. 

"Mrs.  Scarlett — a  woman  of  great  social 
ambition,"  was  their  definition  of  her. 

"Mrs.  Scarlett — the  mother  of  John,"  was 
her  own. 


n 


ON  a  certain  night,  early  in  the  month  of  Sep- 
tember, young  John  dreamt  again — but  for  the 
first  time  for  many  months — the  dream  that 
had,  in  the  old  days,  come  to  him  so  often.  In 
those  days,  perhaps,  he  had  not  called  it  a 
dream.  He  had  not  given  it  a  name,  and  in 
the  quiet  early  days  he  had  simply  greeted,  first 
a  protector,  then  a  friend.  But  that  was  all 
very  long  ago,  when  one  was  a  baby  and  al- 
lowed oneself  to  imagine  anything.  He  had, 
of  course,  grown  ashamed  of  such  confiding 
fancies,  and  as  he  had  become  more  confident 
had  shoved  away,  with  stout,  determined  fin- 
gers, those  dim  memories,  poignancies,  regrets. 
How  childish  one  had  been  at  four,  and  five, 
and  six !  How  independent  and  strong  now,  on 


YOUNG  JOHN  SCARLETT         261 

the  very  edge  of  the  world  of  school!  It  per- 
turbed him,  therefore,  that  at  this  moment  of 
crisis  this  old  dream  should  recur,  and  it  per- 
turbed him  the  more,  as  he  lay  in  bed  next 
morning  and  thought  it  over,  that  it  should 
have  seemed  to  him  at  the  time  no  dream  at 
all,  but  simply  a  natural  and  actual  occurrence. 

He  had  been  asleep,  and  then  he  had  been 
awake.  He  had  seen,  sitting  on  his  bed  and 
looking  at  him  with  mild,  kind  eyes  his  old 
Friend.  His  Friend  was  always  the  same,  con- 
veying so  absolutely  kindness  and  protection, 
and  his  beard,  his  hands,  the  appealing  humour 
of  his  gaze,  recalled  to  John  the  early  years, 
with  a  swift,  imperative  urgency.  John,  so  in- 
dependent and  assured,  felt,  nevertheless,  again 
that  old  alarm  of  a  strange,  unreal  world,  and 
the  necessity  of  an  appeal  for  protection  from 
the  only  one  of  them  all  who  understood. 

"Hallo!"  said  John. 

"Well!"  said  his  Friend.  "It's  many 
months  since  I've  been  to  see  you,  isn't  it?" 

"That's  not  my  fault,"  said  John. 

"In  a  way,  it  is.  You  haven't  wanted  me, 
have  you?  Haven't  given  me  a  thought." 

"There's  been  so  much  to  do.  I'm  going  to 
school,  you  know." 


262        THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

"Of  course.    That's  why  I  have  come  now." 

Beside  the  window  a  dark  curtain  blew  for- 
ward a  little,  bulged  as  though  some  one  were 
behind  it,  thinned  again  in  the  pale  dim  shad- 
ows of  a  moon  that,  beyond  the  window,  fought 
with  driving  clouds.  That  curtain  would — 
how  many  ages  ago? — have  tightened  young 
John's  heart  with  terror,  and  the  contrast  made 
by  his  present  slim  indifference  drew  him,  in 
some  warm,  confiding  fashion,  closer  to  his 
visitor. 

"Anyway,  I'm  jolly  glad  you've  come  now. 
I  haven't  really  forgotten  you,  ever.  Only  in 
the  daytime " 

"Oh,  yes,  you  have,"  his  Friend  said,  smil- 
ing. "It's  natural  enough  and  right  that  you 
should.  But  if  only  you  will  'believe  always 
that  I  once  was  here,  if  only  you'll  not  be  per- 
suaded into  thinking  me  impossible,  silly,  ab- 
surd, sentimental — with  ever  so  many  other 
things — that's  all  I've  come  now  to  ask  you." 

"Why,  how  should  I  ever?"  John  demanded 
indignantly. 

"After  all,  I  was  a  help — for  a  long  time 
when  things  were  difficult  and  you  had  so  much 
to  learn — all  that  time  you  wanted  me,  and  I 
was  here." 


YOUNGF  JOHN  SCARLETT         263 

"Of  course,"  said  John  politely,  but  feeling 
within  him  that  warning  of  approaching  sen- 
timent that  he  had  learnt  by  now  so  funda- 
mentally to  dread. 

Very  well  his  friend  understood  his  appre- 
hension. 

"That's  all.  I've  only  come  to  you  now  to 
ask  you  to  make  me  a  promise — a  very  easy 
one." 

"Yes?"  said  John. 

"It's  only  that  when  you  go  off  to  school — - 
before  you*  leave  this  house — you  will  just,  for 
a  moment,  remember  me  just  then,  and  say 
good-bye  to  me.  We've  been  a  lot  here  in 
these  rooms,  in  these  passages,  up  and  down 
together,  and  if  only,  as  you  go,  you'll  think 
of  me,  I'll  be  there.  .  .  .  Every  year  you've 
thought  of  me  less — that  doesn't  matter — but 
it  matters  more  than  you  know  that  you  should 
remember  me  just  for  an  instant,  just  to  say 
good-bye.  Will  you  promise  me?" 

"Why,  of  course,"  said  John. 

"Don't  forget!  Don't  forget!  Don't  for- 
get!" And  the  kindly  shadow  had  faded,  the 
voice  lingering  about  the  room,  mingling  with 
the  faint  silver  moonlight,  passing  out  into  the 
wider  spaciousness  of  the  rolling  clouds. 


264       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECEOW 


m 

t 

WITH  the  clear  light  of  morning  came  the  con- 
fident certainty  that  it  had  all  been  the  merest 
dream,  and  yet  that  certainty  did  not  sweep 
the  affair,  as  it  should  have  done,  from  young 
John's  brain  and  heart.  He  was  puzzled,  per- 
plexed, disturbed,  unhappy.  The  "  twenty- 
third"  was  approaching  with  terrible  rapidity, 
and  it  was  essential  now  that  he  should  sum- 
mon to  aid  all  the  forces  of  manly  self-control 
and  common-sense.  And  yet,  just  at  this  time, 
of  all  others,  came  that  disturbing  dream,  and, 
in  its  train,  absurd  memories  and  fancies,  bur- 
dened, too,  with  an  urgent  prompting  of  grati- 
tude to  some  one  or  something.  He  shook  it 
off,  he  obstinately  rebelled,  but  he  dreaded 
the  night,  and,  with  a  sigh  of  relief,  hailed 
the  morning  that  followed  a  dreamless 
sleep. 

Worst  of  all,  he  caught  himself  yielding  to 
thoughts  like  these:  "But  he  was  kind  to  me 
— awfully  decent"  (a  phrase  caught  from  his 
elder  brother).  "I  remember  how  He  ..." 
And  then  he  would  shake  himself.  "It  was  only 
a  silly  old  dream.  He  wasn't  real  a  bit.  I'm 


YOUNG  JOHN  SCAELETT         265 

not  a  rotten  kid  now  that  thinks  fairies  and  all 
that  true." 

He  was  bothered,  too,  by  the  affectionate  sen- 
timent (still  disguised,  but  ever,  as  the  days 
proceeded,  more  thinly)  of  his  mother  and  sis- 
ters. The  girls,  May  and  Clare,  adored  yourig 
John.  His  elder  brother  was  away  with  a  school 
friend.  John,  therefore,  was  left  to  feminine 
attention,  and  very  tiresome  he  found  it.  May 
and  Clare,  girls  of  no  imagination,  saw  only 
the  drama  that  they  might  extract  for  them- 
selves out  of  the  affair.  They  knew  what  school 
was  like,  especially  at  first — John  was  going 
to  be  utterly  wretched,  miserably  homesick, 
bullied,  kept  in  over  horrible  sums  and  impos- 
sible Latin  exercises,  ill-fed,  and  trodden  upon 
at  games.  They  did  not  really  believe  these 
things — they  knew  that  their  brother,  Tom, 
had  always  had  a  most  pleasant  time,  and  John 
was  precisely  the  type  of  boy  who  would  pros- 
per at  school,  but  they  indulged,  just  for  this 
fortnight,  their  romantic  sentiment,  never  al- 
luded in  speech  to  school  and  its  terrors,  but  by 
their  pitying  avoidance  of  the  subject  filled  the 
atmosphere  with  their  agitation.  They  were 
working  things  for  John — May,  handkerchiefs, 
and  Clare,  a  comforter;  their  voices  were  soft 


266        THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

and  charged  with  omens,  their  eyes  were  bright 
with  the  drama  of  the  event,  as  though  they 
had  been  supporting  some  young  Christian  re- 
lation before  his  encounter  with  the  lions. 
John  hated  more  and  more  and  more. 

But  more  terrible  to  him  than  his  sisters  was 
his  mother.  He  was  too  young  to  understand 
what  his  departure  meant  to  her,  but  he  knew 
that  there  was  something  real  here  that  needed 
comforting.  He  wanted  to  comfort  her,  and  yet 
hated  the  atmosphere  of  emotion  that  he  felt 
in  himself  as  well  as  in  her.  They  ought  to 
know,  he  argued,  that  the  least  little  thing 
would  make  him  break  down  like  an  ass  and 
behave  as  no  man  should,  and  yet  they  were 
doing  everything.  .  .  .  Oh,  if  only  Tom  were 
here !  Then,  at  any  rate,  would  be  brutal  com- 
mon-sense. There  were  special  meals  for  him 
during  this  fortnight,  and  an  eager  inviting  of 
his  opinion  as  to  how  the  days  should  be  spent. 
On  the  last  night  of  all  they  were  to  go  to  the 
theatre — a  real  play  this  time,  none  of  your 
pantomime ! 

There  was,  moreover,  all  the  business  of 
clothes — fine,  rich,  stiff  new  garments — a  new 
Eton  jacket,  a  round  black  coat,  a  shining  bow- 
ler-hat, new  boots.  He  watched  this  stir  with 


YOUNG  JOHN  SCAELETT         267 

a  brave  assumption  that  he  had  been  surveying 
it  all  his  life,  but  a  horrible  tight  pain  in  the 
bottom  of  his  throat  told  him  that  he  was  a 
bravado,  almost  a  liar. 

He  found  himself,  now  that  the  "twenty- 
third"  was  gaping  right  there  in  front  of  him, 
with  its  fiery  throat  wide  and  flaming,  doing 
the  strangest  thing.  He  was  frightened  of  the 
dusk,  he  would  run  through  the  passage  and 
up  the  stairs  at  breathless  speed,  he  would  look 
for  a  moment  at  the  lamp-lit  square  with  the 
lights  of  the  opposite  houses  tigers'  eyes,  and 
the  trees  filmy  like  smoke,  then  would  hastily 
draw  the  curtains  and  greet  the  warm  inhabited 
room  with  a  little  gasp  of  reassurance.  Strang- 
est of  all,  he  found  himself  often  in  the  old 
nursery  at  the  top  of  the  house.  Very  seldom 
did  any  one  come  there  now,  and  it  had  the 
pathos  of  a  room  grown  cold  and  comfortless. 
Most  of  the 'toys  were  put  away  or  given  to 
hospitals,  but  the  rocking-horse  with  his 
Christmas-tree  tail  was  there,  and  the  doll's- 
house,  and  a  railway  with  trains  and  stations. 

He  was  here.  He  was  saying  to  himself: 
"Yes,  it  was  just  over  there,  by  the  window, 
that  He  came  that  time.  He  talked  to  me  there. 
That  other  time  it  was  when  I  was  down  by 


268       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

the  doll's-house.  He  showed  me  the  smoke 
coming  up  from  the  chimneys  when  the  sun 
stuck  through,  and  the  moon  was  all  red  one 
night,  and  the  stars." 

He  found  himself  gazing  out  over  the  square, 
over  the  twisted  chimneys,  that  seemed  to  be 
laughing  at  him,  over  the  shining  wires  and 
glittering  roofs,  out  to  the  mist  that  wrapped 
the  city  beyond  his  vision — so  vast,  so  huge,  so 
many  people — March  Square  was  nothing.  He 
was  nothing — John  Scarlett  nothing  at  alL 

Then,  with  a  sigh,  he  turned  back.  His 
Friend,  the  other  night,  had  been  real  enough. 
Fairies,  ghosts,  goblins  and  dragons — every- 
thing was  real.  Everything.  It  was  all  ter- 
rible, terrible  to  think  of,  but,  above  and  be- 
yond all  else,  he  must  not  forget,  on  the  day 
of  his  departure,  that  farewell;,  something  dis- 
astrous would  come  upon  nini  were  he  so  un- 
grateful. 

And  then  he  would  go  downstairs  again, 
down  to  newspapers  and  fires,  toast  and  tea, 
the  large  print  of  Frith 's  " Railway  Station," 
and  the  coloured  supplement  of  Greiffenhag- 
en's  "Idyll,"  and  the  tattered  numbers  of  the 
Windsor  and  the  Strand  magazines,  and,  be- 
hold, all  these  things  were  real  and  all  the 


YOUNG  JOHN  SCARLETT         269 

things  in  the  nursery  unreal.  Could  it  be 
that  both  worlds  were  real?  Even  now,  at 
his  tender  years,  that  old  business  of  con- 
necting the  Dream  and  the  Business  was  at  his 
throat. 

"Tea!  Tea!  Tea!"  Frantic  screams  from 
May.  "There's  some  new  jam,  and,  John, 
mother  says  she  wants  you  to  try  on  some  un- 
derclothes afterwards.  Those  others  didn't  do, 
she  said.  ..." 

There  came  then  the  disastrous  hour — an 
hour  that  John  was  never,  in  all  his  afterlife, 
to  forget.  On  a  wild  stormy  evening  he  found 
himself  in  the  nursery.  A  week  remained  now 
— to-day  fortnight  he  would  be  in  another 
world,  an  alarming,  fierce,  tremendous  world. 
He  looked  at  the  rocking-horse  with  its  absurd 
tail  and  the  patch  on  its  back,  that  had  been 
worn  away  by  its  faithful  riders,  and  suddenly 
he  was  crying.  This  was  a  thing  that  he  never 
did,  that  he  had  strenuously,  persistently  re- 
frained from  doing  all  these  weeks,  but  now,  in 
the  strangest  way,  it  was  the  conviction  that 
the  world  into  which  he  was  going  wouldn't 
care  in  the  least  for  the  doll's-house,  and  would 
mock  brutally,  derisively  at  the  rocking-horse, 
that  defeated  him.  It  was  even  the  knowledge 


270       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECBOW 

that,  in  a  very  short  time,  he  himself  would 
be  mocking. 

He  sat  down  on  the  floor  and  cried.  The 
door  opened;  before  he  could  resist  or  make 
any  movement,  his  mother's  arms  were  about 
him,  his  mother's  cheek  against  his,  and  she 
was  whispering:  "Oh,  my  darling,  my  dar- 
ling!" 

The  horrible  thing  then  occurred.  He  was 
savage,  with  a  wild,  fierce,  protesting  rage.  His 
cheeks  flamed.  His  tears  were  instantly  dried. 
That  he  should  have  been  caught  thus!  That, 
when  he  had  been  presenting  so  brave  and  cal- 
lous a  front  to  the  world,  at  the  one  weak  and 
shameful  moment  he  should  have  been  discov- 
ered! He  scarcely  realised  that  this  was  his 
mother,  he  did  not  care  who  it  was.  It  was  as 
though  he  had  been  delivered  into  the  most 
horrible  and  shameful  of  traps.  He  pushed  her 
from  him;  he  struggled  fiercely  on  his  feet. 
He  regarded  her  with  fiery  eyes. 

"It  isn't — I  wasn't — you  oughtn't  to  have 
come  in.  You  needn't  imagine " 

He  burst  from  the  room.  A  shameful,  hor- 
rible experience. 

But  it  cannot  be  denied  that  he  was  ashamed 
afterwards.  He  loved  his  mother,  whereas  he 


YOUNG  JOHN  SCAELETT         271 

merely  liked  the  rest  of  the  family.  He  would 
not  hurt  her  for  worlds,  and  yet,  why  must 
she- 

And  strangely,  mysteriously,  her  attitude 
was  confused  in  his  mind  with  his  dreams,  and 
his  Friend,  and  the  red  moon,  and  the  comic 
chimneys. 

He  knew,  however,  that,  during  this  last 
week  he  must  be  especially  nice  to  his  mother, 
and,  with  an  elaborate  courtesy  and  strained 
attention,  he  did  his  best. 

The  last  night  arrived,  and,  very  smart  and 
excited,  they  went  to  the  theatre.  The  boxes 
had  been  packed,  and  stood  in  a  shining  and 
self-conscious  trio  in  John's  bedroom.  The 
new  play-box  was  there,  with  its  stolid  fresh- 
ness and  the  black  bands  at  the  corners;  in- 
side, there  was  a  multitude  of  riches,  and  it 
was,  of  course,  a  symbol  of  absolute  independ- 
ence and  maturity.  John  was  wearing  the  new 
Eton  jacket,  also  a  new  white  waistcoat;  the 
parting  in  his  hair  was  straighter  than  it  had 
ever  been  before,  his  ears  were  pink.  The 
world  seemed  a  confused  mixture  of  soap  and 
starch  and  lights.  Piccadilly  Circus  was  a 
cauldron  of  bubbling  colour. 

His  breath  came  in  little  gasps,  but  his  face, 


272       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECEOW 

with  its  snub  nose  and  large  mouth,  was  grave 
and  composed;  up  and  down  his  back  little 
shivers  were  running.  When  the  car  stopped 
outside  the  theatre  he  gave  a  little  gulp.  His 
father,  who  was,  for  once,  moved  by  the  occa- 
sion, said  an  idiotic  thing : 

"Excited,  my  son?" 

With  his  head  high  he  walked  ahead  of  them, 
trod  on  a  lady's  dress,  blushed,  heard  his  fa- 
ther say :  ' '  Look  where  you  're  going,  my  boy, '  * 
heard  May  giggle,  frowned  indignantly,  and 
was  conscious  of  the  horrid  pressure  of  his 
collar-stud  against  his  throat;  arrived,  hot, 
confused,  and  very  proud,  in  the  dark  splendour 
of  the  box. 

The  first  play  of  his  life,  and  how  magnifi- 
cent a  play  it  was!  It  might  have  been  a  rot- 
ten affair  with  endless  conversations — luckily 
there  were  no  discussions  at  all.  All  the  char- 
acters either  loved  or  hated  one  another  too 
deeply  to  waste  time  in  talk.  They  were  Eound- 
heads  and  Cavaliers,  and  a  splendid  hero,  who 
had  once  been  a  bad  fellow,  but  was  now  sorry, 
fought  nine  Eoundheads  at  once,  and  was  tor- 
tured "off"  with  red  lights  and  his  lady  wait- 
ing for  results  before  a  sympathetic  audience. 

During    the    torture    scene    John's    heart 


YOUNG  JOHN  SCAELETT         273 

stopped  entirely,  his  brow  was  damp,  his  hand 
sought  his  mother's,  found  it,  and  held  it  very 
hard.  She,  as  she  felt  his  hot  fingers  pressing 
against  hers,  began  to  see  the  stage  through  a 
mist  of  tears.  She  had  behaved  very  well  dur- 
ing the  past  weeks,  but  the  soul  that  she  adored 
was,  to-morrow  morning,  to  be  hurled  out, 
wildly,  helter-skelter,  to  receive  such  tarnish- 
ing as  it  might  please  Fate  to  think  good. 

"I  can't  let  him  go !    I  can't  let  him  go !" 

The  curtain  came  down. 

John  turned,  his  eyes  wide,  his  cheeks  pale 
with  a  pink  spot  on  the  middle  of  each. 

"I  say,  pass  those  chocolates  along!"  he 
whispered  hoarsely.  Then,  recovering  himself 
a  little:  "I  wonder  what  they  did  to  him? 
They  must  have  done  something  to  his  legs, 
because  they  were  all  crooked  when  he  came 
out." 


IV 


AFTERWAKDS,  he  was  lying  in  bed,  watching  the 
firelight,  his  brain  filled  with  that  same  fire,  so 
that  the  dancing  colour  on  the  white  walls 
seemed  to  him  a  reflection  of  his  brain — as 
though  it  were  he  that  were  flinging  that  light. 


274       THE  GOLDEN   SCAEECEOW 

He  was  most  terribly  excited;  those  bright, 
expectant  boxes  facing  him  urged  him  to  start 
off  now,  immediately,  to  begin  to  live  even  be- 
fore the  time  for  to-morrow's  train.  His  heart 
was  beating  like  a  gong  against  the  bedclothes, 
and  he  did  not  suppose  that  he  could  ever  sleep 
again. 

Then  his  mother  came  in.  He  had  been, 
dimly,  expecting  her,  yes,  and  hoping  she  would 
not  come.  She  came  in  a  kind  of  dressing-gown, 
and  sat  down  nervously  on  the  edge  of  his  bed. 

"Well,  dear,  is  everything  all  right?" 

"Yes,  Mother." 

He  knew  that  she  wanted  to  take  his  hand, 
and  was  determined  that  she  should  not,  hold- 
ing it  very  hot  and  tightly  clenched  under  the 
bedclothes. 

"You'll  sleep,  dear,  won't  you,  because 
you've  got  a  hard  day  in  front  of  you?" 

"Oh,  I'll  sleep  all  right,  Mother." 

"Everything's  packed  all  right?" 

"Yes,  Mother." 

"You  enjoyed  the  play,  didn't  you?" 

"Awfully." 

A  terrible  pause,  whilst  his  brain  was  filled, 
ever,  with  more  and  more  fire,  and  he  was  torn 
between  the  impulse  to  fling  himself  into  his 


YOUNG  JOHN  SCARLETT         275 

mother's  arms,  and  let  everything  go,  and  the 
impulse  to  become  stiffer  and  stiffer,  to  repel 
her  as  brutally  and  effectively  as  he  could. 

Her  eyes  were  upon  him;  she  put  her  hand 
on  his  neck  and  stroked  his  hair. 

"John,  dear,  you'll  be  a  good  boy,  won't  you? 
Never  do  what  your  father  and  I  wouldn't  like. 
You're  going  into  the  world  now.  There'll  be 
temptations.  Remember  that  you're  a  gentle- 
man— always — never  do  anything  that  you'd  be 
ashamed  of.  I  want  you  to  grow  up  a  fine  man 
to  help  people.  You'll  say  your  prayers,  dear, 
won't  you?" 

"Yes,  Mother." 

"I've  put  that  new  prayer-book  at  the  top 
of  the  play-box  where  you  can  easily  get  it. ' ' 

"Yes,  Mother." 

"Good  night,  darling.     God  bless  you." 

She  put  her  arms  round  him.  He  kissed  her 
and  felt  that  she  was  crying. 

"It'll  be  great  fun,  Mother,"  he  said,  strug- 
gling to  say  the  right  thing.  ' '  It  '11  be  all  right, 
Mother.  Wasn't  the  play  lovely?  I  don't  know 
how  that  man  can  do  it  every  night,  do  you? 
I'll  write  every  Sunday,  I  expect.  All  the  boys 
do,  Tom  says." 


She  kissed  him  again,  and  went,  very  quietly, 
away. 

It  was  only  when  she  had  gone,  and  he  was 
alone  with  the  firelight  and  the  boxes  again, 
that  he  had  the  conviction  that  someone  had 
been  in  the  room  listening.  He  sat  up  in  bed. 

''My  word,  of  course,"  he  thought,  "I  must 
remember  to  say  good-bye  to  Him  to-morrow. ' T 
He  called  out,  very  softly:  "I  say — I  say,  are 
you  there?" 

There  was  no  one  there.  In  a  moment  he 
was  fast  asleep. 

The  morning  came,  and  with  it  a  tremendous 
bustle.  Reginald  Scarlett,  K.C.,  would  see  his 
son  off  at  the  station ;  there  was  a  special  break- 
fast. Young  John  had  more  money  in  his 
pocket  than  he  had  ever  dreamed  that  he 
would  possess.  Moreover,  the  day  was  glitter- 
ing after  a  night  of  rain ;  a  blue  haze  was  over 
the  Square,  the  fountain  in  the  garden  kicked 
the  air  with  ecstasy,  and  its  falling  waters 
hummed  in  the  heart  of  the  garden  trees. 

There  was  awaiting  him,  he  knew,  a  ghastly 
shadow  of  depression;  it  hovered  behind  him, 
but  with  all  the  energy  of  his  new-found  manli- 
ness he  withstood  it.  He  laughed,  joked,  strut- 
ted, pretended  to  eat  his  breakfast,  stood  at 


YOUNG  JOHN  SCARLETT          277 

last  in  the  hall,  kissing  his  sisters,  watching  out 
of  the  corner  of  his  eye  his  mother,  dreading,  a 
little,  the  quarter  of  an  hour  with  his  father  in 
the  car,  and  beseeching  Heaven  that  no  more 
paternal  advice  would  be  given  him. 

He  kissed  his  mother,  and,  very  hot  and  con- 
fused, shook  hands  with  Horrocks,  the  butler, 
who  choked  a  little  over  his  farewell.  Then  he 
was  in  the  car,  his  father  beside  him. 

But  no,  he  had  not  said  farewell  to  Ellen,  the 
cook.  He  was  out  again,  had  rushed  down  to 
the  kitchen,  kissed  Ellen,  shaken  hands  with 
Mary,  whose  grasp  was  damp  and  steamy,  was 
through  the  hall  and  in  the  car  once  more.  He 
had  one  final  vision  of  his  mother's  white  face, 
of  Horrocks,  and  May,  and  Clare,  of  the  dap- 
pled gold  and  green  of  the  plane-trees,  of  the 
final  flashing  eye  of  the  fountain,  and  they  were 
away. 

During  the  drive  his  father  said:  "I'd  like 
you  to  be  decent  at  cricket ;  I  '11  give  you  a  sov- 
ereign every  fifty  you  make."  And  that,  thank 
Heaven,  was  all. 

He  was  alone  in  the  train.  The  lump  that 
had  been  in  his  chest  was  rising  now  in  his 
throat.  Behind  each  eye  was  a  hot  tear. 

He  was  enveloped  by  the  shadow. 


278       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

It  was  then  that,  struggling  even  now  to  de- 
feat his  enemy,  he  knew  that  he  had  forgotten 
something.  He  counted  his  possessions — his 
new  umbrella,  his  other  coat,  his  cap — every- 
thing was  there. 

He  had  forgotten  something — or  somebody. 
He  struggled  with  his  memory.  He  ran  over  in 
his  mind  the  morning's  events.  He  summoned 
his  friends  and  relations  before  him. 

He  had  forgotten  somebody.  Somebody! 
Something? 

He  gave  it  up.  When  he  remembered  the 
person,  him  or  her,  he'd  send  a  postcard  from 
school.  He  felt  the  money  in  his  pocket,  and 
was  a  little  cheered.  He  opened  a  picture  paper 
with  the  air  of  a  man  of  the  world,  but  even  as 
he  read  he  knew  that  " someone  or  other"  had 
been  forgotten.  .  .  . 


EPILOGUE 


HUGH  SEYMOUB 


IT  happened  that  Hugh  Seymour,  in  the 
month  of  December,  1911,  found  himself 
in  the  dreamy  orchard-bound  cathedral  city 
of  Polchester.  Polchester,  as  all  its  inhabi- 
tants well  know,  is  famous  for  its  cathedral,  its 
buns,  and  its  river,  the  cathedral  being  one  of 
the  oldest,  the  buns  being  among  the  sweetest, 
and  the  Pol  being  amongst  the  most  beautiful 
of  the  cathedrals,  buns  and  rivers  of  Great 
Britain. 

Seymour  had  known  Polchester  since  he  was 
five  years  old,  when  he  first  lived  there  with  his 
father  and  mother,  but  he  had  only  once  dur- 
ing the  last  ten  years  been  able  to  visit  Glebe- 
shire,  and  then  he  had  been  to  Eafiel,  a  fishing 
village  on  the  south  coast.  He  had,  therefore, 

279 


280       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECEOW 

not  seen  Polchester  since  his  childhood,  and  now 
it  seemed  to  him  to  have  shrivelled  from  a 
world  of  infinite  space  and  mystery  into  a  toy 
town  that  would  be  soon  packed  away  in  a  box 
and  hidden  in  a  cupboard.  As  he  walked  up 
and  down  the  cobbled  streets  he  was  moved  by 
a  great  affection  and  sentiment  for  it.  As  he 
climbed  the  hill  to  the  cathedral,  as  he  stood  in- 
side the  Close  with  its  lawns,  its  elm  trees,  its 
crooked  cobbled  walks,  its  gardens,  its  houses 
with  old  bow  windows  and  deep  overhanging 
doors,  he  was  again  a  very  small  boy  with  soap 
in  his  eyes,  a  shining  white  collar  tight  about 
his  neck,  and  his  Eton  jacket  stiff  and  un- 
friendly. He  was  walking  up  the  aisle  with  his 
mother,  his  boots  creaked,  the  bell's  note  was 
dropping,  dropping,  the  fat  verger  with  his 
staff  was  undoing  the  cord  of  their  seat,  the 
boys  of  the  choir-school  were  looking  at  him 
and  he  was  blushing,  he  was  on  his  knees  and 
the  edge  of  the  kneeler  was  cutting  into  his 
trousers,  the  precentor's  voice,  as  remote  from 
things  human  as  the  cathedral  bell  itself,  was 
crying,  ' '  Dearly  beloved  brethren. ' '  He  would 
stop  there  and  wonder  whether  there  could  be 
any  connection  between  that  time  and  this, 
whether  those  things  had  really  happened  to 


EPILOGUE  281 

him,  whether  he  might  now  be  dreaming  and 
would  wake  up  presently  to  find  that  it  would 
be  soon  time  to  start  for  the  cathedral,  that  if 
he  and  his  sisters  were  good  they  would  have  a 
chapter  of  the  " Pillars  of  the  House"  read  to 
them  after  tea,  with  one  chocolate  each  at 
the  end  of  every  two  pages.  No,  he 
was  real,  March  Square  was  real,  Polches- 
ter  was  real,  Glebeshire  and  London  were 
real  together — nothing  died,  nothing  passed 
away. 

On  the  second  afternoon  of  his  stay  he  was 
standing  in  the  Close,  bathed  now  in  yellow 
sunlight,  when  he  saw  coming  towards  him  a 
familiar  figure.  One  glance  was  enough  to 
assure  him  that  this  was  the  Rev.  William 
Lasher,  once  Vicar  of  Clinton  St.  Mary,  now 
Canon  of  Polchester  Cathedral.  Mr.  Lasher  it 
was,  and  Mr.  Lasher  the  same  as  he  had  ever 
been.  He  was  walking  with  his  old  energetic 
stride,  his  head  up,  his  black  overcoat  flapping 
behind  him,  his  eyes  sharply  investigating  in 
and  out  and  all  round  him.  He  saw  Seymour, 
but  did  not  recognise  him,  and  would  have 
passed  on. 

"You  don't  know  me?"  said  Seymour,  hold- 
ing out  his  hand. 


282       THE  GOLDEN  SCABECKOW 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  I "  said  Canon 

Lasher. 

"Seymour — Hugh  Seymour — whom  you  were 
once  kind  enough  to  look  after  at  Clinton  St. 
Mary." 

"Why!  Fancy!  Indeed.  My  dear  boy. 
My  dear  boy!"  Mr.  Lasher  was  immensely 
cordial  in  exactly  his  old,  healthy,  direct  man- 
ner. He  insisted  that  Seymour  should  come 
with  him  and  drink  a  cup  of  tea.  Mrs.  Lasher 
would  be  delighted.  They  had  often  won- 
dered. .  .  .  Only  the  other  day  Mrs.  Lasher 
was  saying.  .  .  .  "And  you're  one  of  our  nov- 
elists, I  hear,"  said  Canon  Lasher  in  exactly 
the  tone  that  he  would  have  used  had  Seymour 
taken  to  tight-rope  walking  at  the  Halls. 

"Oh,  no!"  said  Seymour,  laughing,  "that's 
another  man  of  my  name.  I'm  at  the  Bar." 

"Ah,"  said  the  Canon,  greatly  relieved, 
"that's  good!  That's  good!  Very  good  in- 
deed!" 

Mrs.  Lasher  was,  of  course,  immensely  sur- 
prised. "Why!  Fancy!  And  it  was  only  yes- 
terday! Whoever  would  have  expected!  I 
never  was  more  astonished!  And  tea  just 
ready !  How  fortunate !  Just  fancy  you  meet- 
ing the  Canon!" 


EPILOGUE  283 

The  Canon  seemed,  to  Seymour,  greatly  mel- 
lowed by  comfort  and  prosperity;  there  was 
even  the  possibility  of  corpulence  in  the  not 
distant  future.  He  was,  indeed,  a  proper 
Canon. 

"And  who,"  said  Seymour,  "has  Clinton  St. 
Mary  now?" 

"One  of  the  Trenchards,"  said  Mr.  Lasher. 
"As  you  know,  a  very  famous  old  Glebeshire 
family.  There  are  some  younger  cousins  of 
the  Garth  Trenchards,  I  believe.  You  know 
of  the  Trenchards  of  Garth?  No?  Ah,  very 
delightful  people.  You  should  know  them. 
Yes,  Jim  Trenchard,  the  man  at  Clinton,  is  a 
few  years  senior  to  myself.  He  was  priest 
when  I  was  deacon  in — let  me  see — dear  me, 
how  the  years  fly — in — 'pon  my  word,  how  time 
goes!" 

All  of  which  gave  Seymour  to  understand 
that  the  Eev.  James  Trenchard  was  a  failure 
in  life,  although  a  good  enough  fellow.  Then  it 
was  that  suddenly,  in  the  heart  of  that  warm 
and  cosy  drawing-room,  Hugh  Seymour  was, 
sharply,  as  though  by  a  douche  of  cold  water, 
awakened  to  the  fact  that  he  must  see  Clinton 
St.  Mary  again.  It  appeared  to  him,  now,  with 
its  lanes,  its  hedges,  the  village  green,  the  moor, 


284       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECROW 

the  Borhaze  Eoad,  the  pirates,  yes,  and  the 
Scarecrow.  It  came  there,  across  the  Canon's 
sumptuous  Turkey  carpet,  and  demanded  his 
presence. 

"I  must  go,"  Seymour  said,  getting  up  and 
speaking  in  a  strange,  bewildered  voice  as 
though  he  were  just  awakening  from  a  dream. 
He  left  them,  at  last,  promising  to  come  and 
see  them  again. 

He  heard  the  Canon's  voice  in  his  ears: 
"Always  a  knife  and  fork,  my  boy  .  .  .  any 
time  if  you  let  us  know."  He  stepped  down 
into  the  little  lighted  streets,  into  the  town 
with  its  cosy  security  and  some  scent,  even 
then  in  the  heart  of  winter,  perhaps,  from  the 
fruit  of  its  many  orchards.  The  moon,  once 
again  an  orange  feather  in  the  sky,  reminded 
him  of  those  early  days  that  seemed  now 
to  be  streaming  in  upon  him  from  every 
side. 

Early  next  morning  he  caught  the  ten  o'clock 
train  to  Clinton. 


"WHY,"  in  the  train  he  continued  to  say  to 
himself,  "have  I  let  all  these  years  pass  with- 


EPILOGUE  285 

out  returning?  Why  have  I  never  returned? 
.  .  .  Why  have  I  never  returned?" 

The  slow,  sleepy  train  (the  London  express 
never  stops  at  Clinton)  jerked  through  the  deep 
valleys,  heavy  with  woods,  golden  brown  at 
their  heart,  the  low  hills  carrying,  on  their 
horizons,  white  drifting  clouds  that  flung  long 
grey  shadows.  Seymour  felt  suddenly  as 
though  he  could  never  return  to  London  again 
exactly  as  he  had  returned  to  it  before.  ' '  That 
period  of  my  life  is  over,  quite  over.  .  .  . 
Some  one  is  taking  me  down  here  now — I  know 
that  I  am  being  compelled  to  go.  But  I  want 
to  go.  I  am  happier  than  I  have  ever  been  in 
my  life  before." 

Often,  in  Glebeshire,  December  days  are 
warm  and  mellow  like  the  early  days  of  Septem- 
ber. It  so  was  now ;  the  country  was  wrapped 
in  with  happy  content,  birds  rose  and  hung,  like 
telegraph  wires,  beyond  the  windows.  On  a 
slanting  brown  field  gulls  from  the  sea,  white 
and  shining,  were  hovering,  wheeling,  sinking 
into  the  soil.  And  yet,  as  he  went,  he  was  not 
leaving  March  Square  behind,  but  rather  taking 
it  with  him.  He  was  taking  the  children  too — 
Bim,  Angelina,  John,  even  Sarah  (against  her 
will),  and  it  was  not  her  who  was  in  charge  of 


286       THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECKOW 

the  party.  He  felt  as  though  the  railway  car- 
riages were  full  and  he  ought  to  say  continu- 
ally, "Now,  Bim,  be  quiet.  Sit  still  and  look  at 
the  picture-book  I  gave  you.  Sarah,  I  shall 
leave  you  at  the  next  station  if  you  aren't 
careful,"  and  that  she  replied,  giving  him  one 
of  her  dark  sarcastic  looks,  "I  don't  care  if  you 
do.  I  know  how  to  get  home  all  right  with- 
out your  help." 

He  wished  that  he  hadn't  brought  her,  and 
yet  he  couldn't  help  himself.  They  all  had  to 
come.  Then,  as  he  looked  about  the  empty 
carriage,  he  laughed  at  himself.  Only  a  fat 
farmer  reading  The  Glebeshire  Times. 

"Marnin',  sir,"  said  the  farmer.  "Warm 
Christmas  we'll  be  havin',  I  reckon.  Yes,  in- 
deed. I  see  the  Bishop's  dying — poor  old  soul 
too." 

When  they  arrived  at  Clinton  he  caught  him- 
self turning  round  as  though  to  collect  his 
charges ;  he  thought  that  the  farmer  looked  at 
him  curiously. 

"Coming  back  again  has  turned  my  wits. 
.  .  .  Now,  Angelina,  hurry  up,  can't  wait  all 
day."  He  stopped  then  abruptly,  to  pull  him- 
self together.  "Look  here,  you're  alone,  and 
if  you  think  you're  not,  you're  mad.  Eemem- 


EPILOGUE  287 

ber  that  you're  at  the  Bar  and  not  even  a  nov- 
elist, so  that  you  have  no  excuse. ' ' 

The  little  platform — usually  swept  by  all  the 
winds  of  the  sea,  but  now  as  warm  as  a  toasted 
bun — flooded  him  with  memory.  It  was  a  plat- 
form especially  connected  with  school,  with 
departure  and  return — departures  when  money 
in  one's  pocket  and  cake  in  one's  play-box  did 
not  compensate  for  the  hot  pain  in  one's  throat 
and  the  cold  marble  feeling  of  one's  legs;  but 
when  every  feeling  of  every  sort  was  swal- 
lowed by  the  great  overwhelming  desire  that 
the  train  would  go  so  that  one  need  not  any 
longer  be  agonised  by  the  efforts  of  replying  to 
Mr.  Lasher's  continued  last  words:  "Well, 
good-bye,  my  boy.  A  good  time,  both  at  work 
and  play" — the  train  was  off. 

"Ticket,  please,  sir  I"  said  the  long-legged 
young  man  at  the  little  wooden  gate.  Seymour 
plunged  down  into  the  deep,  high-hedged  lane 
that  even  now,  in  winter,  seemed  to  cover  him 
with  a  fragrant  odour  of  green  leaves,  of  flow- 
ers, of  wet  soil,  of  sea  spray.  He  was  now  so 
conscious  of  his  company  that  the  knowledge 
of  it  could  not  be  avoided.  It  seemed  to  him 
that  he  heard  them  chattering  together,  knew 


288       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECKOW 

that  behind  his  back  Sarah  was  trying  to  whis- 
per horrid  things  in  Bim's  ear,  and  that  he 
was  laughing  at  her,  which  made  her  fu- 
rious. 

* '  I  must  have  eaten  something, ' '  he  thought. 
"It's  the  strangest  feeling  I've  ever  had.  I 
just  won't  take  any  notice  of  them.  I'll  go  on 
as  though  they  weren  't  there. ' '  But  the  strang- 
est thing  of  all  was  that  he  felt  as  though  he 
himself  were  being  taken.  He  had  the  most 
comfortable  feeling  that  there  was  no  need  for 
him  to  give  any  thought  or  any  kind  of  trouble. 
"You  just  leave  it  all  to  me,"  some  one  said 
to  him.  "I've  made  all  the  arrangements." 

The  lane  was  hot,  and  the  midday  winter  sun 
covered  the  paths  with  pools  and  splashes  of 
colour.  He  came  out  on  to  the  common  and 
saw  the  village,  the  long  straggling  street  with 
the  white- washed  cottages  and  the  hideous 
grey-slate  roofs;  the  church  tower,  rising  out 
of  the  elms,  and  the  pond,  running  to  the  com- 
mon's edge,  its  water  chequered  with  the  re- 
flection of  the  white  clouds  above  it. 

The  main  street  of  Clinton  is  not  a  lovely 
street;  the  inland  villages  and  towns  of  Glebe- 
shire  are,  unless  you  love  them,  amongst  the 


EPILOGUE  289 

ugliest  things  in  England,  but  every  step  caught 
at  Seymour's  heart. 

There  was  Mr.  Koscoe's  shop  which  was  also 
the  post-office,  and  in  its  window  was  the  same 
collection  of  liquorice  sticks,  saffron  buns,  reels 
of  cotton,  a  coloured  picture  of  the  royal  fam- 
ily, views  of  Trezent  Head,  Borhaze  Beach,  St. 
Arthe  Church,  cotton  blouses  made  apparently 
for  dolls,  so  minute  were  they,  three  books, 
"Ben  Hur,"  "The  Wide,  Wide  World,"  and 
"St.  Elmo,"  two  bottles  of  sweets,  some  eau- 
de-Cologne,  and  a  large  white  card  with  bone 
buttons  on  it.  So  moving  was  this  collection 
to  Seymour  that  he  stared  at  the  window  as 
though  he  were  in  a  trance. 

The  arrangement  of  the  articles  was  exactly 
the  same  as  it  had  been  in  the  earlier  days — 
the  royal  family  in  the  middle,  supported  by 
the  jars  of  sweets ;  the  three  books,  very  dusty 
and  faded,  in  the  very  front ;  and  the  bootlaces 
and  liquorice  sticks  all  mixed  together  as 
though  Mr.  Boscoe  had  forgotten  which  was 
which. 

"Look  here,  Bim,"  he  said  aloud,  "I've  left 

you  up I  really  am  going  off  my  head!" 

he  thought.  He  hurried  away.  "If  7  am  mad 
I'm  awfully  happy,"  he  said. 


in 

THE  white  vicarage  gate  closed  behind  him 
with  precisely  the  old-remembered  sound — the 
whiz,  the  sudden  startled  pause,  the  satisfied 
click.  Seymour  stood  on  the  sun-bathed  lawn, 
glittering  now  like  green  glass,  and  stared  at 
the  house.  Its  square  front  of  faded  red  brick 
preserved  a  tranquil  silence;  the  only  sound 
in  the  place  was  the  movement  of  some  birds, 
his  old  friend  the  robin  perhaps  in  the  laurel 
bushes  behind  him. 

Although  the  sun  was  so  warm  there  was  in 
the  air  a  foreshadowing  of  a  frosty  night ;  and 
some  Christmas  roses,  smiling  at  him  from  the 
flower  beds  to  right  and  left  of  the  hall  door, 
seemed  to  him  that  they  remembered  him ;  but, 
indeed,  the  whole  house  seemed  to  tell  him  that. 
There  it  waited  for  him,  so  silent,  laid  ready 
for  his  acceptance  under  the  blue  sky  and  with 
no  breath  of  wind  stirring.  So  beautiful  was 
the  silence,  that  he  made  a  movement  with  his 
hand  as  though  to  tell  his  companion  to  be 
quiet.  He  felt  that  they  were  crowded  in  an 
interested,  amused  group  behind  him  waiting 
to  see  what  he  would  do.  Then  a  little  bell 


EPILOGUE  291 

rang  somewhere  in  the  house,  a  voice  cried 
"Martha!" 

He  moved  forward  and  pulled  the  wire  of  the 
bell;  there  was  a  wheezy  jangle,  a  pause,  and 
then  a  sharp  irritated  sound  far  away  in  the 
heart  of  the  house,  as  though  he  had  hit  it  in 
the  wind  and  it  protested.  An  old  woman,  very 
neat  (she  was  certainly  a  Glebeshire  woman), 
told  him  that  Mr.  Trenchard  was  at  home. 
She  took  him  through  the  dark  passages  into 
the  study  that  he  knew  so  well,  and  said  that 
Mr.  Trenchard  would  be  with  him  in  a  mo- 
ment. 

It  was  the  same  study,  and  yet  how  different ! 
Many  of  the  old  pieces  of  furniture  were  there 
— the  deep,  worn  leather  arm-chair  in  which 
Mr.  Lasher  had  been  sitting  when  he  had 
his  famous  discussion  with  Mr.  Pidgen,  the 
same  bookshelves,  the  same  tiles  in  the  fire- 
place with  Bible  pictures  painted  on  them,  the 
same  huge  black  coal-scuttle,  the  same  long, 
dark  writing-table.  But  instead  of  the  old  or- 
der and  discipline  there  was  now  a  confusion 
that  gave  the  room  the  air  of  a  wastepaper 
basket.  Books  were  piled,  up  and  down,  in  the 
shelves,  they  dribbled  on  to  the  floor  and  lay 
in  little  trickling  streams  across  the  carpet; 


292       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

old  bundles  of  papers,  yellow  with  age,  tied 
with  string  and  faded  blue  tape,  were  in  heaps 
upon  the  window-sill,  and  in  tumbling  cascades 
in  the  very  middle  of  the  floor;  the  writing- 
table  itself  was  so  hopelessly  littered  with 
books,  sermon  papers,  old  letters  and  new  let- 
ters, bottles  of  ink,  bottles  of  glue,  three  huge 
volumes  of  a  Bible  Concordance,  photographs, 
and  sticks  of  sealing-wax,  that  the  man  who 
could  be  happy  amid  such  confusion  must 
surely  be  a  kindly  and  benevolent  creature. 
How  orderly  had  been  Mr.  Lasher's  table,  with 
all  the  pens  in  rows,  and  little  sharp  drawers 
that  clicked,  marked  A,  B,  and  C,  to  put  papers 
into. 

Mr.  Trenchard  entered. 

He  was  what  the  room  had  prophesied — fat, 
red-faced,  bald,  extremely  untidy,  with  stains 
on  his  coat  and  tobacco  on  his  coat,  that  was 
turning  a  little  green,  and  chalk  on  his  trous- 
ers. His  eyes  shone  with  pleased  friendliness, 
but  there  was  a  little  pucker  in  his  forehead,  as 
though  his  life  had  not  always  been  pleasant. 
He  rubbed  his  nose,  as  he  talked,  with  the  back 
of  his  hand,  and  made  sudden  little  darts  at  the 
chalk  on  his  trousers,  as  though  he  would  brush 
it  off.  He  had  the  face  of  an  innocent  baby, 


EPILOGUE  293 

and  when  he  spoke  he  looked  at  his  companion 
with  exactly  the  gaze  of  trusting  confidence 
that  a  child  bestows  upon  its  elders. 

'  *  I  hope  you  will  forgive  me, ' '  said  Seymour, 
smiling;  "I've  come,  too,  at  such  an  awkward 
time,  but  the  truth  is  I  simply  couldn't  help 
myself.  I  ought,  besides,  to  catch  the  four 
o'clock  train  back  to  Polchester." 

"Yes,  indeed,"  said  Mr.  Trenchard,  smiling, 
rubbing  his  hands  together,  and  altogether  in 
the  dark  as  to  what  his  visitor  might  be  want- 
ing. 

"Ah,  but  I  haven't  explained;  how  stupid  of 
me!  My  name  is  Seymour.  I  was  here  dur- 
ing several  years,  as  a  small  boy,  with  Canon 
Lasher — in  my  holidays,  you  know.  It's  years 
ago,  and  I've  never  been  back.  I  was  at  Pol- 
chester this  morning  and  suddenly  felt  that  I 
must  come  over.  I  wondered  whether  you'd  be 
so  good  as  to  let  me  look  a  little  at  the  house 
and  garden. ' ' 

There  was  nothing  that  Mr.  Trenchard  would 
like  better.  How  was  Canon  Lasher?  Well? 
Good.  They  met  sometimes  at  meetings  at 
Polchester.  Canon  Lasher,  Mr.  Trenchard  be- 
lieved, liked  it  better  at  Polchester  than  at 
Clinton.  Honestly,  it  would  break  Mr.  Trench- 


ard's  heart  if  he  had  to  leave  the  place.  But 
there  was  no  danger  of  that  now.  Would  Mr. 
Seymour — his  wife  would  be  delighted — would 
he  stay  to  luncheon? 

"''Why,  that  is  too  kind  of  you,"  said  Sey- 
mour, hesitating,  "but  there  are  so  many  of 
us,  such  a  lot — I  mean,"  he  said  hurriedly,  at 
Mr.  Trenchard's  innocent  stare  of  surprise, 
"that  it's  too  hard  on  Mrs.  Trenchard,  with  so 
little  notice." 

He  broke  off  confusedly. 

"We  shall  only  be  too  delighted,"  said  Mr. 
Trenchard.  "And  if  you  have  friends  ..." 

"No,  no,"  said  Seymour,  "I'm  quite 
alone." 

When,  afterwards,  he  was  introduced  to  Mrs. 
Trenchard  in  the  drawing-room,  he  liked  her 
at  once.  She  was  a  little  woman,  very  neat, 
with  grey  hair  brushed  back  from  her  fore- 
head. She  was  like  some  fresh,  mild-coloured 
fruit,  and  an  old-fashioned  dress  of  rather 
faded  green  silk,  and  a  large  locket  that  she 
wore  gave  her  a  settled,  tranquil  air  as  though 
she  had  always  been  the  same,  and  would  con- 
tinue so  for  many  years.  She  had  a  high,  fresh 
colour,  a  beautiful  complexion  and  her  hands 
had  the  delicacy  of  fragile  egg-shell  china.  She 


EPILOGUE  295 

was  cheerful  and  friendly,  but  was,  neverthe- 
less, a  sad  woman ;  her  eyes  were  dark  and  her 
voice  was  a  little  forced  as  though  she  had  ac- 
customed herself  to  be  in  good  spirits.  The 
love  between  herself  and  her  husband  was 
very  pleasant  to  see. 

Like  all  simple  people,  they  immediately 
trusted  Seymour  with  their  confidence.  Dur- 
ing luncheon  they  told  him  many  things,  of 
Easselas,  where  Mr.  Trenchard  had  been  a 
curate,  at  their  joy  at  getting  the  Clinton  liv- 
ing, and  of  their  happiness  at  being  there,  of 
the  kindness  of  the  people,  of  the  beauty  of  the 
country,  of  their  neighbours,  of  their  relations, 
the  George  Trenchards,  at  Garth,  of  Glebe- 
shire  generally,  and  what  it  meant  to  be  a 
Trenchard. 

"  There  Ve  been  Trenchards  in  Glebeshire," 
said  the  Vicar,  greatly  excited,  "since  the  be- 
ginning of  time.  If  Adam  and  Eve  were  here, 
and  Glebeshire  was  the  Garden  of  Eden,  as  I 
daresay  it  was,  why,  then  Adam  was  a  Trench- 
ard." 

Afterwards  when  they  were  smoking  in  the 
confused  study,  Seymour  learnt  why  Mrs. 
Trenchard  was  a  sad  woman. 

" We've  had  one  trial,  under  God's  grace/' 


said  Mr.  Trenchard.  ' '  There  was  a  boy  and  a 
girl — Francis  and  Jessamy.  They  died,  both, 
in  a  bad  epidemic  of  typhoid  here,  five  years 
ago.  Francis  was  five,  Jessamy  four.  'The 
Lord  giveth  and  the  Lord  taketh  away.'  It 
was  hard  losing  both  of  them.  They  got  ill 
together  and  died  on  the  same  day." 

He  puffed  furiously  at  his  pipe.  "Mrs. 
Trenchard  keeps  the  nursery  just  the  same  as 
it  used  to  be.  She'll  show  it  to  you,  I  dare- 
say." 

Later,  when  Mrs.  Trenchard  took  him  over 
the  house,  his  sight  of  the  nursery  was  more 
moving  to  him  than  any  of  his  old  memories. 
She  unlocked  the  door  with  a  sharp  turn  of  the 
wrist  and  showed  him  the  wide  sun-lit  room, 
still  with  fresh  curtains,  with  a  wall-paper  of 
robins  and  cherries,  with  the  toys — dolls,  sol- 
diers, a  big  dolls  '-house,  a  rocking-horse,  boxes 
of  bricks. 

"Our  two  children,  who  died  five  years  ago," 
she  said  in  her  quiet,  calm  voice,  "this  was 
their  room.  These  were  their  things.  I  haven't 
been  able  to  change  it  as  yet.  Mr.  Lasher," 
she  said,  smiling  up  at  him,  "had  no  children, 
and  you  were  too  old  for  a  nursery,  I  sup- 
pose." 


EPILOGUE  297 

It  was  then,  as  he  stood  in  the  doorway, 
bathed  in  a  shaft  of  sunlight,  that  he  was  again, 
with  absolute  physical  consciousness,  aware  of 
the  children's  presence.  He  could  tell  that  they 
were  pressing  behind  him,  staring  past  him  into 
the  room,  he  could  almost  hear  their  whispered 
exclamations  of  delight. 

He  turned  to  Mrs.  Trenchard  as  though  she 
must  have  perceived  that  he  was  not  alone. 
But  she  had  noticed  nothing;  with  another 
sharp  turn  of  the  wrist  she  had  locked  the 
door. 


IV 

TO-MORKOW  was  Christmas  Eve:  he  had  prom- 
ised to  spend  Christmas  with  friends  in  Som- 
erset. Now  he  went  to  the  little  village  post- 
office  and  telegraphed  that  he  was  detained; 
he  felt  at  that  moment  as  though  he  would 
never  like  to  leave  Clinton  again. 

The  inn,  the  ' '  Hearty  Cow, ' '  was  kept  by  peo- 
ple who  were  new  to  him — "  foreigners,  from 
up-country."  The  fat  landlord  complained  to 
Seymour  of  the  slowness  of  the  Clinton  people, 
that  they  never  could  be  induced  to  see  things 
to  their  own  proper  advantage.  "A  dead- 


298        THE  GOLDEN  SCAEECEOW 

alive  place  I  call  it,"  lie  said;  "but  still,  mind 
you,"  he  added,  "it's  got  a  sort  of  a  'old  on 
one. ' ' 

From  the  diamond-paned  windows  of  his  bed- 
room next  morning  he  surveyed  a  glorious  day, 
the  very  sky  seemed  to  glitter  with  frost,  and 
when  his  window  was  opened  he  could  hear 
quite  plainly  the  bell  on  Trezent  Eock,  so  crys- 
tal was  the  air.  He  walked  that  morning  for 
miles;  he  covered  all  his  old  ground,  picking 
up  memories  as  though  he  were  building  a 
pleasure-house.  Here  was  his  dream,  there 
was  disappointment,  here  that  flaming  discov- 
ery, there  this  sudden  terror — nothing  had 
changed  for  him,  the  Moor,  St.  Arthe  Church, 
St.  Dreot  Woods,  the  high  white  gates  and  mys- 
terious hidden  park  of  Portcullis  House — all 
were  as  though  it  had  been  yesterday  that  he 
had  last  seen  them.  Polchester  had  dwindled 
before  his  giant  growth.  Here  the  moor,  the 
woods,  the  roads  had  grown,  and  it  was  he  that 
had  shrunken. 

At  last  he  stood  on  the  sand-dunes  that 
bounded  the  moor  and  looked  down  upon  the 
marbled  sand,  blue  and  gold  after  the  retreat- 
ing tide.  The  faint  lisp  and  curdle  of  the  sea 
sang  to  him.  A  row  of  sea-gulls,  one  and  then 


EPILOGUE  299 

another  quivering  in  the  light,  stood  at  the 
water's  edge;  the  stiff  grass  that  pushed  its 
way  fiercely  from  the  sand  of  the  dunes  was 
white  with  hoar-frost,  and  the  moon,  silver 
now,  and  sharply  curved,  came  climbing  behind 
the  hill. 

He  turned  back  and  went  home.  He  had 
promised  to  have  tea  at  the  Vicarage,  and  he 
found  Mrs.  Trenchard  putting  holly  over  the 
pictures  in  the  little  dark  square  hall.  She 
looked  as  though  she  had  always  been  there, 
and  as  though,  in  some  curious  way,  the  holly, 
with  its  bright  red  berries,  especially  belonged 
to  her. 

She  asked  him  to  help  her,  and  Seymour 
thought  that  he  must  have  known  her  all  his 
life.  She  had  a  tranquil,  restful  air,  but,  now 
and  then,  hummed  a  little  tune.  She  was  very 
tidy  as  she  moved  about,  picking  up  little 
scraps  of  holly.  A  row  of  pins  shone  in  her 
green  dress.  After  a  while  they  went  upstairs 
and  hung  holly  in  the  passages. 

Seymour  had  turned  his  back  to  her  and  was 
balanced  on  a  little  ladder,  when  he  heard  her 
utter  a  sharp  little  cry. 

"The  nursery  door's  open,"  she  said.  He 
turned,  and  saw  very  clearly,  against  the  half- 


300       THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

light,  her  startled  eyes.  Her  hands  were 
pressed  against  her  dress  and  holly  had  fallen 
at  her  feet.  He  saw,  too,  that  the  nursery  door 
was  ajar. 

"I  locked  it  myself,  yesterday;  you  saw 
me." 

She  gasped  as  though  she  had  been  running, 
and  he  saw  that  her  face  was  white. 

He  moved  forward  quickly  and  pushed  open 
the  door.  The  room  itself  was  lightened  by 
the  gleam  from  the  passage  and  also  by  the 
moonlight  that  came  dimly  through  the  win- 
dow. The  shadow  of  some  great  tree  was  flung 
upon  the  floor.  He  saw,  at  once,  that  the  room 
was  changed.  The  rocking-horse  that  had  been 
yesterday  against  the  wall  had  now  been 
dragged  far  across  the  floor.  The  white  front 
of  the  dolls '-house  had  swung  open  and  the 
furniture  was  disturbed  as  though  some  child 
had  been  interrupted  in  his  play.  Four  large 
dolls  sat  solemnly  round  a  dolls'  tea-table,  and 
a  dolls'  tea  service  was  arranged  in  front  of 
them.  In  the  very  centre  of  the  room  a  fine 
castle  of  bricks  had  been  rising,  a  perfect 
Tower  of  Babel  in  its  frustrated  ambition. 

The  shadow  of  the  great  tree  shook  and 
quivered  above  these  things. 


EPILOGUE  301 

Seymour  saw  Mrs.  Trenchard's  face,  he 
heard  her  whisper: 

"Who  is  it?    What  is  it?" 

Then  she  fell  upon  her  knees  near  the  tower 
of  bricks.  She  gazed  at  them,  stared  round 
the  rest  of  the  room,  then  looked  up  at  him, 
saying  very  quietly: 

'  *  I  knew  that  they  would  come  back  one  day. 
I  always  waited.  It  must  have  been  they. 
Only  Francis  ever  built  the  bricks  like  that, 
with  the  red  ones  in  the  middle.  He  always 
said  they  must  be.  .  .  ." 

She  broke  off  and  then,  with  her  hands 
pressed  to  her  face,  cried,  so  softly  and  so 
gently  that  she  made  scarcely  any  sound. 

Seymour  left  her. 


HE  passed  through  the  house  without  any  one 
seeing  him,  crossed  the  common,  and  went  up 
to  his  bedroom  at  the  inn.  He  sat  down  before 
his  window  with  his  back  to  the  room.  He 
flung  the  rattling  panes  wide. 

The  room  looked  out  across  on  to  the  moor, 
and  he  could  see,  in  the  moonlight,  the  faint 
thread  of  the  beginning  of  the  Borhaze  Road. 


302        THE  GOLDEN  SCARECROW 

To  the  left  of  this  there  was  some  sharp  point 
of  light,  some  cottage  perhaps.  It  flashed  at 
him  as  though  it  were  trying  to  attract  his 
attention.  The  night  was  so  magical,  the 
world  so  wonderful,  so  without  bound  or  limit, 
that  he  was  prepared  now  to  wait,  passively, 
for  his  experience.  That  point  of  light  was 
where  the  Scarecrow  used  to  be,  just  where  the 
brown  fields  rise  up  against  the  horizon.  In 
all  his  walks  to-day  he  had  deliberately  avoided 
that  direction.  The  Scarecrow  would  not  be 
there  now;  he  had  always  in  his  heart  fan- 
cied it  there,  and  he  would  not  change  that 
picture  that  he  had  of  it.  But  now  the  light 
flashed  at  him.  As  he  stared  at  it  he  knew 
that  to-day  he  had  completed  that  adven- 
ture that  had  begun  for  him  many  years  ago, 
on  that  Christmas  Eve  when  he  had  met  Mr. 
Pidgen. 

They  were  whispering  in  his  ear,  " We've 
had  a  lovely  day.  It  was  the  most  beautiful 
nursery.  .  .  .  Two  other  children  came  too. 
They  wore  their  things.  ..." 

"What,  after  all,"  said  his  Friend's  voice,    \ 
/    "does  it  mean  but  that  if  you  love  enough  we 
are  with  you  everywhere — for  ever? "  j 

And  then  the  children's  voices  again: 


EPILOGUE  303 

"She  thought  they'd  come  back,  but  they'd 
never  gone  away — really,  you  know." 

He  gazed  once  more  at  the  point  of  light,  and 
then  turned  round  and  faced  the  dark 
room.  .  *  . 


THE   END 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


COL.  US, 


Book  Slip-25ro-9,'60(.B2S36s4)4280 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


Library 


A    001  193447     8 


UCLA-College  Library 

PR  6045  W16g 


L  005  769  291   5 


;        PR 

I  601 

W16g 

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I 
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